Marieke Lucas Rijneveld - De Avond Is Een Ongemak (Atlas Contact, 2018) ****

 I am not very interested in Dutch literature because of too many disappointments. If the world is my place, and my language one of the tiniest language groups in this world, what are the chances to have the best literature coming from this tiny language group? Like with all statistics, the chances are smaller than when you read English or Spanish novels. Quality is somehow the result of quantity, whether you like that or not. 

When Marieke Lucas Rijneveld won the International Booker Prize this year with The Discomfort of Evening, I had to review my position. The novel tells the story of a young girl whose brother has just died. This affects the whole family of very religious farmers, who each try to deal with this loss in their own way. The environment is full of tension, hypocrisy and lack of empathy, even if all characters in the novel are described with compassion. Her craving for love and physical contact is only responded by a rigid and suffocating environment. 

Not only the subject matter, but also the language and the stylistic power of the novel makes it worthwhile literature. The child absorbs information from her teachers, brother, sister and family, while misinterpreting this information or combining it in sometimes strange reasonings, even if plausible when seen through the eyes of a child. The paragraph below illustrates this well. 

In short, an emotionally compelling, well written and captivating novel.