Getting to know a village | de Volkskrant

You will only see it when you realize it, and that is exactly what concerns me since I think I see that the center of everything that happens in the world lies in the village of Deurne. Yes, the song The village, made famous by Wim Sonneveld, is set there, but there is so much more. Just pay attention and you will see it too.

It may also be that I have now developed a slight obsession with Deurne and that is why I see the name flashing up in every news item. Anyway, I can’t ‘see’ it anymore and it can’t be a coincidence that the author of the novel The unintentional onesCobi van Baars, who has been nominated for the Libris Literature Prize, went to school in… (cliffhanger)

Van Baars is a surprising name on that shortlist, which is further populated by writers who, dare I say, take some getting used to when it comes to being nominated. Like Esther Gerritsen, champion (5x), has never won one of the major (cash) prizes, it says Area 19 (previously discussed here, read by Vincent Croiset) and Rob van Essen (winner of the Libris in 2019 with The good son) of I will come back to this (read by Maarten Westra Hoekzema), but also Sacha Bronwasser with Listen (discussed here previously, read by Bronwasser himself), Frank Nellen met The invisible ones (ditto, read by Frank Rigter) and then there is debutant Maud Vanhauwaert, who Tosca wrote (not yet available as an audiobook).

Back to Deurne, excuse me, to Van Baars, because I wrote that she is a surprising name, and that is true when it comes to nominations, but The unintentional ones, a novel based on a true story of twin sisters who were deliberately separated after birth and who only found each other again later, is already her fourth novel. The book is read by actress Wivineke van Groningen, beautiful, clear, subtle.

I see a lot about Deurne, but I actually know nothing about it, apart from some journalistic anecdotal. This makes me the best example of Jan Brokken’s statement: ‘You always know too little about your own country.’ He wrote to illustrate this The discovery of Holland, a book that is not about the entire country, but about Volendam. The village that is now known for a quarreling and relegating football club, musicians and singers, and a strong preference for that cabinet that will never come, Keijzer I.

But Volendam was a completely different story in the 19th century, as Brokken’s latest shows, a village that attracted a stream of international artists. Not a handful, but hundreds came from all over the world to Volendam, to be precise to Hotel Spaander, where they were pampered and where the owner fully mediated between the painters and potential models in the village. Louis van Beek reads out, energetically, with slight excitement, that all that happened in Volendam!

Knowing nothing about a village, knowing nothing about a country, knowing everything about everything. It has been within reach since 2004, when journalist Bill Bryson published his four hundred pages A little history of almost everything published. About two decades of new knowledge has now been added. The inflation of this title will not be small, insofar as it was already comprehensive at the time.

Bryson wrote the book when he realized how little he knew about everything and will undoubtedly have scratched his head regularly even after writing it. There is only now a listening version, which lasts no less than 21 hours and 50 minutes, so the duration alone can give a feeling of ‘knowing everything’. Johannes Sneekes reads. Just pay attention to whether Deurne is mentioned.