Last year we read Annejet van der Sol’s book – Sonnyboy, this year it is Joe Speedboat, Tommy Wieringa’s debut novel from 2005 that is central to the campaign to promote reading. Wieringa’s classic will celebrate its twentieth anniversary next year and will be released in a free edition by the CPNB especially for Heel Nederland Leest.
Joe Speedboat
Joe Speedboat is a book that you simply must have read and that you can re-read endlessly. It is a novel about love and rivalry between newcomers in a Dutch village. The events give the dormant village a dynamic from which it will never recover. Fransje Hermans, the narrator of the story, became disabled after an accident and lost his ability to speak. Fransje is endlessly fascinated by the newcomer Joe Speedboot: the boy who chose his own name and at the age of fifteen is already a bomber, aircraft builder and movement philosopher.
Fransje carefully observes how other newcomers come to disrupt the natural order of the village: Joe’s stepfather Papa Afrika, a gentle Nubian with gazelle eyes, and the mysterious Picolien Jane, a beautiful South African. All stories come together in her, with fateful consequences.
The whole of the Netherlands reads
So in November we all read together Joe Speedboat by Tommy Wieringa. That book can be picked up for free from the library throughout the month of November. To allow everyone to read along, this year there will again be a special large print edition and an edition in easy language Joe Speedboat. Are you reading along?
Tags: book Netherlands reading year
