Olga Ravn - The Employees (Penguin Books, 2020) ****

"The Employees" is a relatively unique novel. It describes a future situation, in which a few hundred statements from employees, both human and humanoid, are collected to assess the problems of production, the efficiency of workflows, and the possible remedies in the context of objects they are observing on a planet far away from ours. Through these statements, some very short, and some more extensive, we are introduced to a strange science-fiction of a dystopian future. Danish author Olga Ravn said she was inspired by the exhibition "Consumed Future Spewed Up as Present" by visual artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund. 

"STATEMENT 054  

It's easy talking to you. It feels like whatever I say is right. I speak and you write down what I say. You smile at me. I think you all look really good. I get the feeling that while you're noting things down you're also drawing me. The bio-draperies are stringy: the third and the sixth are wet, the first and fourth are shades of blue, while those from 10 to 14 are all the same colour, which changes with the ship's cycle. The second and ninth bio-draperies are red, and a wind blows through them. Some days they sway gently, other times they flap like mad. These fluc­tuations in the wind follow neither the ship's cycle nor, as far as I can make out, any other logic, at least none that we know of as yet. The fifth bio-drapery is silver, not silver silver, but a kind of transparent, glimmering chiffon, though of course it's not chiffon at all, but bio-tissue. This one, the fifth bio-drapery, is definitely the friendliest of the draperies, whereas the one next to it, the sixth bio-drapery, can't be said to express any form of personality at all and yet is the one the workers touch the least, it seems to be made out of the deepest darkness and has very little materiality at all. The eighth bio-drapery bears the closest resemblance to something  that could be familiar to us, having the same quality and appearance, even the same smell, as chocolate-coloured corduroy, a pleasant and at the same time faintly con­templative bio-drapery. We call it the Grandfather Drape. Although hardly anyone in our section ever had a grand­father, we still know the concept. It's not a difficult concept to grasp" (p.45)

Reading all these "statements" one after the other - without sequence or logic - becomes a kind of hypnotic reading experience, with lots of repetitions - obviously all statements are about the same topic - and new angles of approach. The statements all seem to assume a common knowledge of the context and the objects, which only gradually unfold for the mystified reader, and mostly they don't, resulting in uncanny feeling of total alienation. That is one of the main qualities of Ravn's writing: the coherent language of familiar words that obfuscate the world described instead of illuminating it. 

Dorothy Tse - City Like Water (Fitzcarraldo, 2026) ****

Dorothy Tse Hiu-hung is a writer from Hong-Kong, the city that is the setting of "Owlish" her previous novel, as well as "City Like Water", which gives the dreamy and sinister narrative of a city that disappears, as do its citizens. 

"Nobody will admit that my little sister ever existed. I'm the only one who's glad she got away when she did, exiting our lives like a ball through a window, making barely a sound as she bounced off to the unseeable end of our blindingly sunlit street" (p. 27)

Her style and narrative are elliptic: many things remain unsaid, unnamed, and approached in a very indirect way, maybe as a protective strategy of an author who still lives in China, or maybe as a reflection of what it means to live in a country where every single utterance can be considered a subversion deserving punishment.

"What I actually wanted to say was trodden beneath the soles of my feet, muted like the scurrying shadows. After school, I'd put on my backpack and walk, on and on around the streets, eyes on my silhouette while my mind conjured all the ways the police could collect evidence against me. I'd heard there was a crime called loitering. How far would I have to wander aimlessly, and for how long, to commit it? I mentally rehearsed my response to police questioning. I'd point into the distance, where dust swirled around the foot of a pedestrian bridge, and claim that was where I was headed. Headed to the bridge to uncover the meaning of my life." (p.38)

Her sister disappeared of her own free will. Her mother disappears when sitting together with other housewives in a protest meeting. 

"The missing housewives reappeared on the TV news, their heads carefully extracted from family snapshots and enlarged for our screens. Their long-unused names were resuscitated by the news anchors, who read them aloud in one long list. Those women had become the city's most wanted criminals. I saw my mum's face again; she was posing beside a bushy tangerine tree, wearing new clothes in honour of the new year, sporting a wide grin and that hairdo I cringed to look at. '... the counter-revolutionaries are members of a criminal gang that disguised themselves as housewives' " (p. 51)

Even if the story is told by one person, about her own situation with her sister, her father and mother, the real lead characters are the city and its citizens, as well as the repressive system that wants to drown every act of dissent. Even if the perspective is personal, the story is about the collective. 

"Then we came to realize there was also something childish about the police. They needed only the smallest encouragement to start playing around with their pistols, instantly obsessed with winning their invented game. All we had to do was sit mournfully on the street, sing­ing elegies to our lost mothers, and bullets would come at us from all sides. The smoking rounds released a stink that made our eyes weep as much as our skin. We walked the same streets we had always walked, but now we felt like deep-sea explorers. Even school kids were equipped, their book bags crammed with swimming goggles, water to counteract tear gas, cling film to protect arms from tox­ic spray" (p. 53)

It's only eighty-six pages long, enough to present the drama of a single city delivered to the power of autocracy. 

Dominique De Groen - Corpus Britney (Het Balanseer, 2026) ****½

In vele recensies wordt "Corpus Britney" 'pynchonesk' genoemd, maar dat is wat hoog gegrepen. Inderdaad, het boek is volumineus, de gebeurtenissen zijn bizar, en zowat alles is mogelijk als plotwending, en het gaat ook over de onzichtbare wereld die ons leven mee bepaalt, en die we misschien kunnen vermoeden, maar waar we zelden mee in aanraking komen. Bij Pynchon gaat het dan om een totale samenleving, en de terechte paranoia van het individu om hier mee om te gaan, en dan nog vaak in een situatie die niet te begrijpen is. Een soort mind-fuck die elke rationaliteit overstijgt. 

De benadering van De Groen is meer persoonlijk, als een zoektocht naar zichzelf en haar evenbeeld doorheen tijd en plaats door de raakvlakken van computerspelletjes en verdovende middelen te doorbreken als toegangspoorten tot een andere realiteit, die hopelijk verheldering kan brengen. 

"Op haar scherm verschijnt een ouderwetse webpagina. Twee hoekige 3D-avatars poseren voor een skyline van fonkelende wolkenkrabbers. Het meisje heeft blond haar en draagt een diep uitgesneden wit topje en een felroze broek met lage taille, de jongen draagt een pet en dikke zilveren halskettingen. Beiden zijn flink gebruind en hebben een zonnebril op. 'MTV Virtual Video Music Awards', staat er in grote discoletters bovenaan de afbeelding, en ernaast de tekst: Enter MTV's VIRTUAL Palms Hotel and visit 3 of the extravagant Fantasy Suites featured in the 2007 VMAs - right from your very own living room. It's the oppor­tunity of a lifetime! The basketball themed Hardwood suite, the glammed out Pink Suite and the crown jewel of the Palms, the incredible Sky Villa, will be jammed with celebrity guests all week long. Drop by and party all night long with crazy big stars and a wide world of VMA fanatics.Geen virussen, geen scams, alleen een wanhopige poging van MTV om hun jaarlijkse Video Music Awards een interactieve online­component te geven. So far, so 2007. Het waren de hoogdagen van de virtuele wereld Second Life, waar gebruikers in elke mogelijke gedaante door de digitale domeinen konden dwalen, andere avatars ontmoeten, handeldrijven en houterige seks hebben met vreemden in gothic BDSM-kelders (al heeft ze dat laatste enkel van horen zeggen). Blijkbaar wilde MTV niet achterblijven. Malayneys cursor zweeft over de blauwe knop in het midden van de pagina. Hij zal haar transporteren naar het digitaal gesimu­leerde Palms Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, waar de VMA's dat jaar plaatsvonden. In de ruïnes van dat vergeten experiment zullen zij en tOxic_slut elkaar na al die jaren treffen. (p.99)

Welkom in de vreemde wereld van De Groen, wiens taalgebruik honderd procent hedendaags is, zonder zich al te veel te bekommeren om welke taal dat is, en die zeker ook geen uitleg behoeven. 

'Silas Silverfox, ma'am. Aangenaam'. Hij stampt zijn peuk uit met de hak van zijn laars en rolt een nieuwe sigaret. Zijn knoestige vingers werken nauwkeurig, voorzichtig, bijna teder. Malayney voelt een wilde kriebel in haar kut. De man is half doorschijnend! zegt ze tegen zichzelf. Kan best zijn, werpen haar eileiders tegen, maar check dat compacte, gespierde, gehavende lijf, die zilve­ren strepen in zijn haar, die diepe groeven in zijn gebruinde voorhoofd, die stem gemarineerd in mescal en roltabak ... Uh, sploosh? Hoop maar dat je hier straks een werkende kraan vindt om je broekje uit te wassen. Wat maakt het ons uit dat hij een man zonder substantie is? Hij heeft andere kwaliteiten. Dit is het lichaam van een man die geleefd heeft.  Nu ja, lichaam. Natuurlijk is het hele 'immateriele, half­in-half-uit deze dimensie'-ding Malayneys ultieme turn-on. Ze moet het toegeven, dit is haar achilleshiel; smachten naar wolken psychische energie, naar wezens die zich slechts eens om de vier jaar op het materiële vlak manifesteren, en dan verbaasd zijn dat ze chronisch droogstaat, ha-ha, typisch Malayney ... Ze kijkt weg terwijl Silverf ox aan het vloeipapier likt. Zijn halfdoorschijnende tong dreigt dingen in haar wakker te maken die ze niet de vrije loop wil laten. Hij steekt zijn sigaret aan en begint te vertellen." (p. 355)

Dit dus. Vierhonderdzeventig bladzijden lang, en elk blad, elke zin zijn een plezier te lezen. De Groen is een ontketende schrijfster, iemand die ver buiten de lijntjes kleurt, die meegesleurd wordt door haar eigen schrijf-enthousiasme, door de schier eindeloze mogelijkheden van plotwendingen, karakters, situaties en rationale en fysieke onmogelijkheden, die door fictie natuurlijk wel kunnen omgetoverd worden tot een nieuwe, andere realiteit. 

Natuurlijk is het niet perfect, maar ik denk dat elke bedenking over beter evenwicht, betere beheersing een rem zouden zijn geweest op de leeservaring die we nu krijgen voorgeschoteld. 

Het is bombastisch, exuberant, uitbundig, levendig, overvloedig, weelderig, bandeloos, buitensporig, extravagant, ongeremd, tomeloos en soms wild. Ik vaak hardop gelachen met de branie van haar stijl, het plezier waarmee ze zinnen en situaties moet hebben neergepend. 

Weg met de kneuterige en parochiale Nederlandse literatuur. Geef mij maar De Groen!

Elif Shafak - Honour (Penguin, 2012) ***

This is the third novel I read by British author Elif Shafak, after "There Are Rivers In The Sky" (Penguin, 2025) and "10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World" (Penguin, 2020). 

"Honour" gives again a kaleidoscopic narrative in different times (1961 and 1977/1978) and places (London and a "place near river Euphrates"), and many narrators who tell the events in the story each from their perspective, including letters from jail. Esma Toprak, a London-bred Turkish Kurd, goes to Shrewsbury Prison to collect her brother, who has just served a 14-year term for the murder of their mother, as a means to protect the family honour.

The story starts in a Kurdish village where two baby girls are born, "Pembe Kader and Jamila Yeter - Pink Destiny and Enough Beauty. Who could tell that one of these names would some day be printed in newspapers all around the world"? Both twin sisters have different characters, the one more introvert, the other more adventurous, one stays in the village and become a midwife, the other moves to London in the hope of offering her children a better future. 

As time evolves, relationships build, careers develop, and the generations follow one another. Shafak creates a whole family universe with all its complexities, frustrations, setbacks and friendships. To her credit, each character has a justifiable perspective, and even Iskender, who is in jail, has a voice that is worth hearing, caught up as he was in the old traditional code of honour that sometimes results in violence and death. 

Shafak starts the book with this paragraph: "When I was seven years old, we lived in a green house. One of our neighbours, a talented tailor, would often beat his wife. In the evenings, we listened to the shouts, the cries, the swearing. In the morning, we went on with our lives as usual. The entire neighbourhood pretended not to have heard, not to have seen."

She takes a stand against domestic violence and mindless honour codes. In the novel, she lets her characters speak. Of the three novels I have read by her, this is not the one that I liked most, primarily because she gives too much detail, too many words that drown the progress of the narrative. 

Liadan Ní Chuinn - Every One Still Here (Granta, 2026) ****

Liadan Ní Chuinn is a brilliant story-teller. For each of the six stories in this book, 'they' find a singular voice and angle of approach that gives the narrative poignancy and directness, authenticity and the possibility to relate to the main character. 

And this is despite the fact that all of the stories are characterised by highly unusual subject matter: a Protestant hijacking of a Catholic family’s car, which takes place while the first-person narrator, Jackie, is still in the womb; a museum in which a “disrupter” lays floral tributes beside exhibits of human remains; and a medical-school dissection class where students cut into human bodies with scalpels while grappling with questions of consent: “But did they know that they weren’t going to stay whole? But did they sign that their head could be taken off at the neck?” In another story, terminal illness gradually reduces a beloved husband to bodily fluids, lumps, and a contorted, collapsing skeleton. Yet this physical deterioration does not diminish his wife’s devotion. She continues to care for him with almost ritualistic tenderness, shaving him, trimming his fingernails and ear hairs, bathing him with coconut oil, and tending to his increasingly fragile body; in the last story, another male character, Rowan, angrily defends his preoccupation with British soldiers’ actions in Ulster, arguing back against a friend who sees fault on both sides and wants to consign the Troubles to the past

“I’m sick of this, right, Rowan?” his cousin Shane says. “It happened, right? It happened, two sides, either side, both, it happened, it stopped.
I hate that, says Rowan. It’s not both sides, it’s not either side, it’s this huge fucking army, it’s this huge fucking state, this government that does whatever it wants, that just, that, they can kill us, and kill us.”

But first and foremost, all the characters are human, people with clear context, emotions and carefully defined personalities, people you can relate to. Despite the often heavy situations in which they end up, there is still room for humour and the relative nature of life: 

A psychic asks her client why he’s come. "Aren’t you supposed to know? he answers. “The psychic says: Everyone, no word of a lie, every single person says that. You’ve, none of youse, you’ve no concept of how this works.”

Recommended! 

Steven Mithen - The Language Puzzle (Profile Books, 2024) ***

Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I missed some of the essence of this book, but it left me somewhat disappointed. Steven Mithen is a "British archaeologist. He is noted for his work on the evolution of language, music and intelligence, prehistoric hunter-gatherers, and the origins of farming. He is professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading" (Wikipedia). The title is an apt one, in which he brings all the current knowledge together as pieces of a huge puzzle: language among animals and especially apes, the evolution of the human brain, the evolution of culture and the need for communication, the nature of language, the physiology of speech and hearing, language to transcend the concrete world, etc. 

"As such, their lexicons had little impact on how they perceived the world. Modern humans used linguistic metaphors to explain and understand abstract concepts - ideas about other worlds and ancestral beings, notions of justice, identity and ownership. 

Such concepts could be assembled into new categories with no grounding in the world, which then eased the invention of learning, recall and explanation of further abstract concept that now had a category to sit within. Once the category of the supernatural was conceived, this provided a home for new concepts and their associated words, such as ghosts, spirits and spells. The lexicon continued to expand and stories took on new dimensions with complex plots, heroes and villains, magic, events and imaginary worlds. Storytelling became an art form for impressing, persuading, educating and entertaining by the skilful use of words. (p 388)

Many of these aspects are of course widely known, and it is of interest to see them all listed one after the other, yet there is no deeper insight than what was already known. The puzzle, once made, shows a picture that was already familiar, because not specific to language or its evolution. He misses a great deal of information on recent research in neuroscience on language. 

My son Tom did his PhD on the neurological origin of language, conducting brain scans to identify which types of words and even concepts were located in which part of the brain. Interestingly, it was not in the prefrontal cortex as many expected, but in the deeper part, the amygdala or the 'animal' part of the brain. 

Charlotte Van den Broeck - Een Vlam Tasmaanse Tijgers (Arbeiderspers, 2025) ****

Van dit boek heb ik echt genoten. Het is geen fictie, maar het leest als fictie. Charlotte Van den Broeck behaalde een Master Engelse en Duitse Letterkunde aan de Universiteit Gent en een Master Drama aan het Koninklijk Conservatorium, Antwerpen. In 2015 debuteerde ze met de dichtbundel ‘Kameleon’, bekroond met de Herman De Coninck Debuutprijs. In 2017 verscheen ‘Nachtroer’, waarvoor ze de driejaarlijkse Paul Snoekprijs voor de beste Nederlandstalige bundel kreeg. 

Dit is iets heel anders. Dit is het verslag van een persoonlijke reis naar Tasmanië, op zoek naar de laatste Tasmaanse Tijger, die laatst leven werd gezien in een zoo in 1936, en in het wild in 1930, maar sommigen beweren dit schuwe dier toch nog gespot te hebben in de Tasmaanse oerwouden. Van den Broeck gaat op zoek, en spreekt in Tasmanië met wetenschappers en met gewone mensen op plekken waar het dier zogezegd zou gezien zijn. Haar reis is tegelijk een grote mijmering over onze samenleving, die respectloos omgaat met een broze natuur, met een vergankelijkheid die niet kan worden gereconstrueerd, ook niet als onze wetenschap op basis van DNA ooit een nieuw dier te voorschijn kan toveren, zal het wel de biologische kenmerken hebben, maar nooit de 'culturele' kennis om te kunnen overleven in het wild. En wie wil nu een dier tot leven wekken dat gedoemd is om in een kooi te leven? 

Ze stelt de juiste vragen in mijn ogen, legt ook de juiste verbanden tussen wetenschappelijke bevindingen en hun interpretatie. 

"Anderzijds denken we misschien graag dat onze bevindingen wetenschappelijke reve­laties zijn, maar het zijn verhalen, in de zin dat we ze moeten interpreteren. Ze spreken niet voor zichzelf, maar hebben even­goed analyse nodig om betekenis te krijgen. Soms zijn er drie of vier opeenvolgende onderzoekers die op hetzelf de onderwerp voortborduren, waarbij de opvolger steeds de set verhalen van de vorige uitdaagt en daar weer op voortbouwt. Het is een uit­dijend heelal van begrijpen. De verhalen breiden zich uit in de tijd en het zal nooit ophouden. Mensen zullen over honderden jaren nog steeds met deze fossielen werken en hopelijk zullen de verhalen steeds beter worden, strakker geredigeerd, maar altijd onderhevig aan uitdaging - dat is wetenschap. Er is geen zekerheid. Geen waarheid. Wetenschap moet altijd kwetsbaar zijn, dat is heel belangrijk. Wetenschap eist dat je kan bewijzen dat iets fout is. Als je een idee naar voren schuift dat niet getest kan worden, dan is het geen wetenschap." (blz 256)

Zoals je merkt, het is ook een filosofisch-wetenschappelijk werk. Het leest vlot. Het is aangrijpend en menselijk. Het stelt onze hele samenleving, onze hele manier van leven in vraag. Het boek gaat misschien nog meer over de mens dan over de Tasmaanse tijger. 

Heerlijk hoe non-fictie ook literatuur kan zijn! 

 

Jonathan Haidt - The Anxious Generation (Penguin, 2025) ****

This is a hot topic of discussion among my children about the education of our grandchildren. What is allowed or not? How much screen time? Which controls? Are social media even at all allowed? 

Jonathan Haidt makes his key points from the start of the book, and you truly wonder what he will write in the next 300 pages that will interest the reader, yet he manages to be substantiated, broad in his knowledge base, and equally generous to the opinion of other perspectives, yet the data and evidence are clear enough. Children learn a lot of social skills by playing: outdoor, physical activities with changing alliances, and with the obvious insight that nobody is good at everything all the time. You win, you loose. He uses Gray's definition on the value of play: "play requires suppression of the drive to dominate and enables the formation of long-lasting cooperative bonds". Social media do the exact opposite. 

"The way young people use social media is generally not much like free play. In fact, posting and commenting on social media sites is the opposite of Gray's definition. Life on the platforms forces young people to become their own branq. managers, always thinking ahead about the social consequences of each photo, video, comment, and emoji they choose. Each action is not necessarily done for its own sake: rather, every public action is, to some degree, strategic. It is, in Peter Gray's phrase, consciously pursued to achieve ends that are distinct from the activity itself. Even for kids who never post anything, spending time on social media sites can still be harmful because of the chronic social comparison, the unachievable beauty standards, and the enormous amount of time taken away from everything else in life" (p. 57)

And the value of outdoor play is clear:  

"Unsupervised outdoor play teaches children how to handle risks and challenges of many kinds. By building physical, psy­chological, and social competence, it gives kids confidence that they can face new situations, which is an inoculation against anxiety. (...) a healthy human child­hood with a lot of autonomy and unsupervised play in the real. world se'ts- children's brains to operate mostly in ''discover mode," with a well-developed attachment system and an abil­ity to handle the risks of daily life. Conversely, when there is society-wide pressure on parents to adopt modern overpro­tective parenting, it sets children's brains to operate mostly in ''defend mode, with less secure attachment and reduced ability to evaluate or handle risk. (p. 72)

The systematic use and access to social media as of a young age, can have devastating results for future development: 

"The human brain reaches 90% of its adult size by age 5, and it has far more neurons and synapses at that moment than it will have in its adult form. Subsequent brain development, therefore, is not about overall growth but about the selective pruning of neurons and synapses, leaving only the ones that have been frequently used. Brain researchers say, ''Neu­rons that fire together, wire together," meaning that activities that repeatedly activate a constellation of neurons cause those neurons to connect more closely. If a child goes through puberty doing a lot of archery, or painting, or video games, or social media, those activities will cause lasting structural changes in the brain, especially if they are rewarding. (p. 102)

And this also results in effects on gender activities and motivations: 

"The two motives are woven together in changing patterns across the life course, and that weaving is particularly important for adolescents who are developing their identities. Part of defining the self comes from successfully integrating into groups; part of being attractive to groups is demonstrating one's value as an individual with unique skills. Researchers have long found that boys and men are more focused on agency strivings while girls and women are more focused on communion strivings. The fact that these gender differences have decreased over time tells us that they result in part from cultural fac­tors and forces. The fact that they emerge early in children's play and can be found in the gendered play patterns of other primates tells us that there is probably a biological contribution as well. (p. 163)

In user statistics across the globe, the impact of social media on the mental well-being, suicides and school results are confirmed again and again. 

"When everything moved onto smartphones in the early 2010s, both girls and boys experienced a gigantic increase in the number of their social ties and in the time required to service these ties (such as reading and commenting on the posts of acquaintances or maintaining dozens of Snapchat ''streaks'' with people who are not your closest friends). This explosive growth necessarily caused a decline in the number and depth of close friendships" (p. 180)

Young people become isolated instead of feeling part of a larger group, one that gives them confidence, in which they can play an active role, in which they can listen and be listened to. 

"Durkheim argued that Homo sapiens could just as well be called Homo duplex, or two-level man, for we exist on two very different levels. We spend most of our lives as individuals pursuing our own interests. He called this the realm of the ''profane,'' which means the ordinary day-to-day world where we are very concerned about our own wealth, health, and reputation. But Durkheim showed that nearly all societies have created rituals and communal prac­tices for pulling people 'up,' temporarily, into the realm of the sacred, where the self recedes and collective interests predomin­ate. Think of Christians singing hymns together every Sunday in church; think of Muslims circling the Kaaba in Mecca; think of civil rights marchers singing as they walked. Evidence that these two levels are available to everyone, even outside a religious con­text, can be found in the ways that fans of sports teams use similar techniques to bind themselves toge.ther before a game with pep rallies, the singing of fight songs, and shared consciousness alteration (usually from alcohol), along with a variety of quasi­religious rituals, superstitions, and body markings. It is a thrill to be one of thousands of fans in a stadium, all singing and stomp­ing in unison after each goal or touchdown. Durkheim called this state of energized communion ''collective effervescence.'; 

This is one of the founding insights of sociology: Strong com­munities don't just magically appear whenever people congregate and communicate. The strongest and most satisfying communities come into being when something lifts people out of the lower level so that they have powerful collective experiences. They all enter the realm of the sacred together, at the same time. When they return to the profane level, where they need to be most of the time to address the necessities of life, they have greater trust and affection for each other as a result of their time together in the sacred realm. They are also happier and have lower rates of suicide. (p. 218)

He takes it a step higher when discussing the value of spiritual experience in the largest sense, better described by 'awe' for the world around us, including man-made elements:  

"Awe is triggered by two simultaneous perceptions: first, that what you are looking at is vast in some way, and, second, that you can't fit it into your existing mental structures. That combination seems to trigger a feeling in people of being small in a profoundly pleasurable - although sometimes also fearful - way. Awe opens us to changing our beliefs, allegiances, and behaviors. Dacher (...) and his students collected thousands of accounts of awe experiences from people around the world and sorted them  into the 'eight most common categories, which he calls the ''eight wonders of life": they are moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spiritual and religious awe, life and death, and epiphanies (moments in which a new and grand under­standing dawns). 'p. 228)

"Soon before his death in 1662, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote a paragraph often paraphrased as ''there is a God-shaped hole in every human heart." I believe he was right. In "The Righteous Mind" I drew on the writings of Charles Darwin and the biologist David Sloan Wilson to explain how natural selection might have carved that hole: humanity went through a long period of what is known as multilevel selection in which groups competed with groups, while at the same time individuals competed with indi­viduals within each group. The most cohesive groups won, and humans evolved - by both biological and cultural evolution - an adaptation that made their groups even more cohesive: religiosity (including both the fear and the love of gods). (p. 213)

An excellent book that I can recommend to any parent and grandparent, even if his writing is very scientific and aimed at policy-makers and educators more than to citizens, but I think we will all benefit if the monster of social media can be reigned in to create value instead of devastation. 

Charles Freeman - The Awakening (Head of Zeus, 2020) *****

This is one of those monumental works on the history of thought that anyone with an interest in the subject should read. Freeman is a well-known author of works on history, such as "The Closing of the Western Mind" (2005). In "The Awakening", he describes how the Western Mind opened to extract itself from religious thought, dogma and superstition, to be replaced by doubt, questioning, evidence and facts, and the development of the scientific method in parallel with the rise of democratic thought and structures. 

Yet he starts by describing the darkness from which we started, including the bizarre religious concept that god has a full insight of every feeling and every thought of every individual at any moment: a terrifying concept that already convinced me as a child that I would never ever be allowed to heaven. 

"If human beings are inherently sinful, as Augustine taught, there had to be definition of what was sinful and what was not. St John Cassian, who is credited with bringing the ideals and practices of eastern monasticism to the West, outlined eight vices in his influential Institutes, among them any expression of sexuality. It is interesting that in addition to fornication, self-glorification and avarice, Cassian includes what he considers unhealthy moods such as sadness and apathy (acedia). In the Irish Church, the clergy used Penitentials, handbooks that listed sins and the correct penance for each one. Crucially, as Augustine had already argued, the inner mind became accessible to God. 'Let us consider how severe a judge is coming; who will judge not only our evil deeds but our every thought,' preached Pope Gregory the Great. This was a psychological transformation of enormous importance. Nothing was invisible to God. Furthermore, the church itself defined what was sinful or not. The opportunities to manipu­late its control over its congregations were magnified. No ancient religion had enjoyed this power and its appearance marks a revo­lutionary development in the history of European thought. The Christian was required to live in a permanent state of alert, some­thing unknown in the classical world". (p. 70)

This was further reinforced with the obligation to confess. 

"Prominent was the council's requirement that the faithful had to take communion once a year and also make a confession. This was, as one medievalist has described it, 'perhaps the most impor­tant legislative act in the history of the Church'. The dialogue between confessor and sinner forced the individual to search his or her own conscience, discuss the nature of their intentions and so the extent to which they should take personal responsibility for their guilt. The distinguished German historian Johannes Fried argues that 'the history of the psyche and human attitudes, and hence the entire history of the West, was profoundly affected by this change.' This may be too sweeping an assessment and assumes that the medieval mind was ready to he so subservient. Even so, taking personal responsibility for one's guilt was only part of the impact of the church's teaching on the probability of damnation at the Last Judgement. (p. 97)

Luckily, the religious dogma and often bizarre practices and behaviour (see first paragraph below) gradually started to crack by the insights and courage of individuals, even from within the Church. 

"As far back as the second century the earliest 'Latin' theologian, Tertullian, from Carthage in North Africa, had asked the question 'What has Jerusalem to do with Athens, the Church with the Academy, the Christian with the heretic? ... Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic; and dialectic compo­sition. We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel.' Instead, one should simply be receptive to God's word, a view that was often repeated by the Church Fathers. Gregory the Great's saying that 'Faith has no merit for which human reason offers proof' sug­gested that praise should be given to those who do not question, a view that has persisted in the Catholic Church throughout its his­tory. lntrusion into faith was, in Bernard's (of Clerveaux) graphic phrase, simply 'tearing out the guts of God's secrets' and in a specific condemna­tion of Abelard, he protested, 'Let him who scanned the Heavens go down into the depths of Hell'. Offering his mind directly to the heavens, Bernard valued the Virgin Macy as an intercessor with Christ and even reported that once when he was ill a statue of the Virgin came alive and offered her breasts for him to suck healing milk" (p. 112)

"In Sic et Non Abelard hit on the original - if provocative idea of quoting the Church Fathers on specific theological issues, some 158 of them, so that one could see that they often contradicted each other. Although Abelard stated that much could be resolved by a careful analysis of the language of different texts, it was inevitable that readers would be unsettled by this presentat·ion of opposing views. Abelard did not seem to care. Doubting was healthy in itself, as he put it in the Prologue to Sic et Non: 'For it is from doubt that we arrive at questioning and in a state of questioning we arrive at the truth.' He went on to sug­gest that anyone, not just experienced theologians, could grapple with the issues of logic in Christian doctrine. This was bound to offend conservatives who argued that doctrine was coherent and beyond challenge, esp·ecially by the ordinary faithful. Even if the importance of this approach was not grasped at the time, Abelard's championing of doubt was an important moment in the awakening of the western mind. Progress in knowledge is impos­sible if conventional thinking is never doubted."(p. 107)

Gradually, reason and democracy join hands and become part of the system. The Magna Carta is a prime example of this. 

"In Plantagenet England a constitutional conflict between the barons and King John resulted in the remarkable Magna Carta of 1215, which is still recognized today in English law as a fundamental statement of liberty from arbitrary rule. Its original Larin title, Magna Carta Libertatum ('The Great Charter of Liberties') pro­claims its purpose. The personal and political freedoms it listed applied not only to the barons but to all freeborn men and to cities, notably London. There were now to be limits on royal authority, extraordinary taxes were only to be raised with the approval of 'the general council of the kingdom' (the word par­liamentum appears for the first time only in 1237), and the barons would be able to supervise the actions of the king. One of its most famous articles, Clause 39, stated that 'no free man shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or exiled or injured in any way ... except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land'. Rights of the individual to inheritance and chattels were also protected." (p. 140)

In short, this book is highly recommended to understand the incredible struggle that Western civilisation has fought to emancipate itself from theocracy and dictatorship. Today, the most prosperous countries in the World, happen also to be the ones with the best democratic systems, the best education and the least percentage of believers. To me the recipe is clear, yet the dark forces of zealots, oligarchs and theocrats are still very much alive, including in the West.

"The issue that weighs on anyone who sees the importance of fostering tolerance, accepting that science has achieved more for the welfare of humanity than institutional religion, and being open to more profound thinking about the human condition' is that these values are still under threat 300 years later. In The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama was seriously mistaken in assuming that liberal democracy had triumphed after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and that a high point of civilization had been reached. Every passing year seems to throw further doubt on this assessment. It is all the more vital to learn how painful was the birth of such values and how vulnerable their survival. But it is also right to applaud the cultural riches that they have provided. I do think I am justified in describing the long centuries from the fall of the Roman empire to 1700 as a process, often fitful and haphazard, of an 'awakening of the Western mind'.

Here are some more worthwhile excerpts, yet I recommend to buy and read the whole book. 

"Between 750 and 900 they translated most of the known works of Aristotle into Arabic. Aristotle was particu­larly valuable because he looked at a question from all angles and emphasized that issues were up for discussion that could only be resolved through reason. This led to sophisticated debates on the relationships between philosophy and theology and an awareness of the key issues in ethics and the sciences. Ibn Sina, known in the west as Avicenna (980-1037) was an intellectual superstar. (...) His Metaphysics, which arrived in the west at much the same time, was a massive commentary on the works of Aristotle that reinterpreted them to present a coherent system of Avicenna's own making. In the words of the contemporary scholar Peter Adamson: Avicenna went out of his way to be innovative, deliberately overthrowing centuries of tradition to forge a new and distinctive philosophy. This was an essential step forward if the scattered and hetero­geneous works of the great Greek philosopher were to be at all comprehensible, but Avicenna went beyond Aristotle in provid­ing original arguments for the nature of the existence of God. This made his works relevant for some western theologians but infuriated others who felt that Aristotle's texts were too authoritative to be tampered with. Aristotle's authority was further enhanced by Ibn Rushd, known in the west as Averroes (1126-98), from Cordoba, in Muslim Spain, where he practised as a judge. He was also the court physician to the Almohad caliphate, but his real passion was philosophy. Like Abelard, he came under pressure from conservative theologians for his insistence that theology and philosophy could be used equally as alternative and perhaps divergent approaches to finding the truth (what Averroes termed the 'double truth'). There was always the fear, and it would return in the Paris schools of theology; that philosophy, based on pagan Greek sources, would overthrow theological orthodoxy (whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian), but Averroes, like Abelard, did not believe that it should do so. He admired Avicenna but felt that he had been too radical in diverting from Aristotle's original works. These were the gold standard, 'the highest truth, since his spirit was the highest point of the human spirit - it is justly said that he was created and delivered to us by the providence of God, so that we may come to know everything that can be known'.(p. 145)

In 268 Aquinas returned to Paris to find that a number of the arts teachers had gone further than he had, in preferring Aristotle's views on the soul and the eternity of the world over orthodox Christianity. The two most prominent were masters of arts, Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia. They relied so heavily on the Islamic Averroes' adulation of Aristotle that they are known as the Latin Averroists. While they accepted Christian teaching, their support for Aristotelian philosophy as a means of finding the truth was so enthusiastic that it was as if they were ignoring theology. So they argued that God could not do something that Aristotle had shown to be physically impossible. One example was that God could not move the cosmos in a straight line as this would leave a vacuum, and Aristotle had taught (erro­neously, as would later be discovered) that a vacuum could not exist. This contrasted with the orthodox Christian view that God could do anything short of a logical contradiction.

"Marsilius, however, rejects 'natural' hier­archies, in particular the concept that good birth is related to the ability to govern. Within the next few years many of Marsilius's ideas were supported by the lawyer Bartolus da Sassoferrato,(...). Bartolus was as concerned as Marsilius was with the internecine disputes between and within the Italian cities. The two agreed that the sovereignty of the people can never be alienated and that religion should be kept separate from politics. This approach was to prove especially fruitful. In their own time it provided a riposte to those who wished to retain the authority of the Church over secular rulers. Not since the era of the Roman empire had anyone reflected as probingly and effectively as this on the ways in which the citizenry (though only males) as a whole could he involved in government. The influence of Aristotle, with his emphasis on the harmonious order of the city through the collective, and natural, will of the citizens to achieve civil happiness, is clear."

"Petrarch never overcame his detestation of the scholastic obsession with Aristotle. He was responsible for coining the term 'Dark Ages' to describe the medieval period he believed he was still living in following the extinction of the 'light' of classical antiquity. Several of his works dwell on how the moral corruption of his age allowed a lust for wealth to transcend spiritual values. He believed he was restoring the light and continuously harked baek in his writings ro the superiority of Rome. (...) Petrarch championed tolerance, echoing ancient beliefs when he noted that 'many can be forced to confess, but not to believe. No liberty is gre-ater than the liberty to think. As I claim it for myself, so I do not deny it for others ... I am unwilling to be the judge of the human conscience which is something hidden and deep.' This acceptance of intellectual diversity was an important moment in Renaissance thought. It ensured that humanism was never a homogenous movement : rather, it opened up intense debates on 'the condition of man'.

"(Gentili) recognized that there had to be some basis for evolving the rules governing their relationships, but in a falous saying - silete theologi in munere alieno - ' Silence theologian, in matters that do not concern you' - he insisted that theology must be kept out of it. Where Gentili and his followers differed from the theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, was in assuming that natural law was not necessarily to be interpreted as having been founded by God. (...) For Gentili, a legal system needed to be based, pragmatically, on the actual practice of civi­lized nations. Religion was a private matter between individuals and their God. What was important for Gentili was to find a way in which traditional natural law, 'the set of principles that are true for all peoples at all times' and which regulate the desire to live in a peaceful and rational social order, could be incorporated into the law of nations."

"Philosophically, Grotius made an impo·rtant contribution to the concept of natural law. While he was prepared to accept that natural law might show the will of God, he claimed (controver­sially for many of his contemporaries) that its precepts would hold true even if God did not exist. Natural law is so intrinsic to human existence that even God cannot change it. 'Just as even God cannot cause that two times two should not equal four, so he cannot cause that which is intrinsically evil be n.t evil.' As a result Grotius has been seen by some as marking a new beginning in moral philosophy, 'th.e secularization of virtue'. He narrowed the precepts of natural law down to two: the right of self-pres­ervation and the right to live socially with others."

"In the Novum Organon, Bacon elaborates on what he calls the 'idols', the hindrances that come between the mind and reality. The senses, he says, are always unreliable: we can be led astray by information that conforms with what we already believe and we can easily be swayed by the opinions of the marketplace. It is important to separate scientific knowledge from theological belief, which is based on textual authority rather than material evidence. Ultimately, however, there was a place for God in Bacon's system: certain knowledge could be found in 'the true signatures and marks set upon the works of [divine] creation as they are found in nature... all knowledge appeareth to be a plant of God's own planting'. The trick was to mend 'the cracked mirror; of the mind so as to distinguish what God had actually created from what were vain imaginings. (...) Once sufficient material has been gathered to form the basis of a reasonable hypothesis, the hypothesis itself has to be tested. For Bacon, it was as important to find evidence to refute it as it was to find evidence to confirm it. This was one of Bacon's most important contributions to scientific method."

Nelio Bidermann - Lázár (Maclehose Press, 2026) ****

"Lázár" has been lauded in many reviews and rightly so. For a debut novel, the result is absolutely exceptional. It is the story of a Hungarian aristocratic family, with all its money and deficiencies, facing the brutal history of the 19th century, followed over three generations, from WWI till the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet Union in 1956, and its aftermath. Despite all their bizarre qualities, all the characters in the novel have their charm and you sympathise with them, despite their privileged status in society. 

His style is at the same time poetic, full of fantasy, madness, magic and death, as if a Hungarian version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He is also smart in his surprising way of presenting reality with a strange perspective. Some examples: 

• "The war was common property and a better topic of conversation than the weather". 
• "He had always been surrounded by death. On the one hand, concrete death, to which his grandparents had fallen victim and now was not spoken about; on the other, abstract death that included the downfall of the Monarchy, the decline of the aristocracy and the disappearance of the traditional values on which their world was founded". 

Willing or not, the family gets swept up in the great changes of time, and their world gradually collapses, as does their family. Each period is written from the perspective of the youngsters of that time, who look back at their parents and grandparents that we have come to know so well in the meantime, which gives a nice flow to the novel. His description of the characters and their struggle with themselves, their relationships and the great wheel of history, are fun, refreshing and captivating. 

On the other hand, it goes a little too fast over some of the early events, which remain undeveloped in their potential. This may have been intentional, but also not. The translucency of Lajos's skin for instance is a great idea at birth, yet it remains unclear how he suddenly becomes a normal person so many years later. 

Recommended and we can't wait for his next novel. 

Donald Niedekker - Nevenwezen (Koppernik, 2026) **

"Twee jongens, twee werelden; de een groeit op onder de rook van een Zaanse cacaofabriek, de ander werkt op een plantage in West-Afrika. Ze worden door balenlossers, molenaars, middenstanders, een stenen adelaar, een rondreizende verhalenverteller, een chauffeur, een panter en een krokodil op sleeptouw genomen door de jaren zeventig. Hun levens raken elkaar – door de geur van cacao en de grillen van de Azteekse scheppergod Quetzalcoatl en zang- en bloemen-god Xochipilli, die hoog boven de twee jonge protagonisten hun glorie proberen te herwinnen." Dat is in het kort het verhaal samengevat door de uitgeverij. 

Niedekker schrijft mooi en lyrisch. Hij benadert het leven van beide jongens - maar vooral met aandacht voor de Nederlander - door korte beschrijvingen te geven van incidentele gebeurtenissen, zonder dat ze noodzakelijk met elkaar in verband staan, als een soort foto-album van kiekjes. Die zijn precies en vaag tegelijk, concreet maar ook heel abstract omdat de jongens niet alleen naamloos zijn, maar ook amper gevoelens hebben. Hun realiteit wordt afstandelijk beschreven, zonder veel in de diepte te gaan. De emotionele interpretatie ligt bij de lezer. 

Het spiegeleffect van de twee jongens is een mooie vondst. Het creëert een bijna magische sfeer van grijze zones en vervagende grenzen: tussen tijd en ruimte, tussen waarheid en fantasie, en tussen mensen, ongeacht hun afkomst. Op de achtergrond speelt Niedekker bovendien met de muziek en politiek van de jaren zeventig. Zo passeren namen als Genesis, Mike Oldfield en Bowie, naast politieke figuren als Willy Brandt, Joop den Uyl, Olof Palme en Julius Nyerere.

Net als de impressionistische schilderijen van Monet en Manet, naar wie in de roman meermaals wordt verwezen, bestaat ook Niedekkers roman uit snelle indrukken: kleine, naast elkaar geplaatste kleurvlakken die samen veel licht en helderheid oproepen. De zon en het leven flikkeren door de snapshots uit het leven van de jongens. Toch leveren al die indrukken nog onvoldoende spankracht of spanning op om de lezer werkelijk in hun greep te houden. Zijn lyrisch proza is als een stilleven, een waar niets of weinig in gebeurt. 

Sorj Chalandon - Enfant De Salaud (Grasset, 2021) ****½

Op een heel elegante en slimme manier verweeft Chalandon het proces tegen Gestapo-leider Klaus Barbie met het leven van zijn eigen vader die als collaborateur mee heulde met de nazi's en het Vichy-regime van Maarschalk Pétain. Net zoals in andere van zijn romans, is de relatie met zijn manipulatieve, leugenachtige en gevoelloze vader de drijfveer voor het schrijven. De ik-figuur gaat graven in het verleden en in gerechtsarchieven van het eind van de Tweede Wereldoorlog om de geschiedenis van zijn vader te ontrafelen en eindelijk de waarheid te ontdekken. In parallel - en perfect opgebouwd in deze roman - wordt het hele proces tegen Klaus Barbie verhaald, met alle getuigenissen, pleidooien en veroordelingen. 

Het verhaal is diep emotioneel, inclusief het oppakken en naar de concentratiekampen verzenden van de 44 kinderen van Izieu, een huis ergens in bergen waar joodse ouders hun kinderen hadden ondergebracht om hen voor de nazi's te beschermen, maar dan toch verraden en op bevel van Barbie op de trein gezet. De echte realiteit is de horror, inclusief de onverbloemde getuigenissen die op het proces worden gegeven. 

Tegelijk is het verhaal grotendeels autobiografisch, met de standpunten van progressief journalist Sorj diametraal tegengesteld aan het mythomane rechtse gedachtengoed van de vader. Het onbegrip, de leugens, het weglachen, het minimaliseren zijn vreselijk om als kind telkens weer mee geconfronteerd te zijn geweest. Maar gaandeweg wordt het verhaal van de vader genuanceerder, laffer, zelfzuchtiger, een psychologische roep op lijfsbehoud in een wrede en meedogenloze wereld. 

"J'étais prêt à tout lire et à tout comprendre. J' étais heureux de savoir, et terrifié par ce que j'allais apprendre. Peur d'avoir un dénonciateur pour père, un voyou grattant des lettres anonymes ou téléphonant à la Gestapo. Lorsque je t'ai lu désertant l'armée française défaite pour t'enroler dans la légion de Pétain, j'ai espéré que ton histoire s'arrêterait là. Un jeune décervelé rejoignant la loi du plus fort en se rêvant sauveur du pays. Cette guerre-là m' allait bien. Elle me permettait de comprendre tout le reste. Toi qui, ta vie entière, t'étais reproché de ne pas aller plus loin dans ton combat, d' abandonner tes camarades aux portes de la LVF (Légion des Volontaires Français, a French collaborationist military unit that fought for Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front), de suivre leurs batailles plus tard, dans les livres d'histoire, et de raconter à ton bonhomme de fils que tu y étais. Orgueil, vanité, arrogance,mensonge, folie, tout cela se tenait. Mais plus j'avançais dans ton histoire, la vraie, faite de témoignages, de déclarations, de lettres, de tampons et de signatures, plus tout cela volait en éclats. Tout ce que tu avais prétendu était faux et tout ce que tu avais raconté était vrai." (p. 208)

Literatuur kan nog hoogstaand zijn, maatschappelijk relevant en emotioneel. 

Een heel sterke aanrader.

---

In a very elegant and clever way, Chalandon weaves together the trial of Gestapo leader Klaus Barbie with the life of his own father, who, as a collaborator, went along with the Nazis and Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime. As in his other novels, his relationship with his manipulative, deceitful and callous father is the driving force behind his writing. The first-person narrator delves into the past and into court archives from the end of the Second World War to unravel his father’s history and finally uncover the truth. In parallel – and perfectly structured within this novel – the entire trial of Klaus Barbie is recounted, complete with all the testimonies, closing arguments and verdicts. 

The story is deeply emotional, including the rounding up and deportation to the concentration camps of the 44 children from Izieu, a house somewhere in the French mountains where Jewish parents had hidden their children to protect them from the Nazis, only for them to be betrayed and put on a train on Barbie’s orders. The true reality is one of horror, including the unvarnished testimonies given at the trial. 

At the same time, the story is largely autobiographical, with the views of the progressive journalist Sorj standing in stark contrast to his father’s mythomaniacal right-wing ideology. The lack of understanding, the lies, the brushing it off with a laugh, the downplaying – it must have been awful to be confronted with all this time and again as a child. But gradually, the father’s story becomes more nuanced, more cowardly, more selfish – a psychological cry for self-preservation in a cruel and ruthless world. 

Literature can still be of a high standard, socially relevant and emotionally moving. 

Highly recommended!

Janna Coomans - Dievenland (De Bezige Bij, 2025) ****

Net als Marta van der Laak met "Heksenjacht" is onderzoekster Janna Coomans in rechterlijke archieven gaan zoeken naar teksten die te maken hadden met kleine rechtszaken van gewone mensen in onze Lage Landen, maar vooral gefocust op die van Kampen en Deventer. Haar focus is niet om de misdaad in kaart te brengen, wel om aan de hand van teksten te achterhalen hoe de mensen toen leefden, waarom ze deze misdaden begingen en hoe de gemeenschap hierop reageerde. 

Er was veel bittere armoede onder de bevolking in die tijd, met mensen die volledig afhingen van landheren om voldoende werk en inkomsten te hebben, maar van zodra er tegenslag was, waar een groot deel van de bevolking mee geconfronteerd werd, hingen ze af van werk als dagloner, hun diensten aanbiedend op boerderijen, dorpen en steden. Als er geen werk was, was diefstal bijna de enige manier om  in leven te blijven. 

Coomans toont aan dat voor diefstal uit lijfsbehoud een vaak mildere straf werd gegeven dan bij de bijna professionele dieven die heel het grondgebied en ook in Duitsland aan de slag waren, en die zowal goederen als dieren stalen en die veel verder doorverkochten aan de hen gekende helers. 

Maar voor de meesten ging het echt om overleven, zoals de ondertitel suggereert. 

Een aanrader voor wie belangstelling heeft over de rand van onze samenleving in de Middeleeuwen.

Paul Christiaan Smis - Historische Verhalen (Historische Verhalen, 2018) **

Ik was eerlijk gezegd wat ontgoocheld in dit boek. Ik had gehoopt en verwacht om echte verhalen uit de Middeleeuwen geserveerd te krijgen, maar het is eigenlijk fictie tegen een historische achtergrond. Die is wel correct en goed weergegeven, wat de verhalen plausibel maakt maar niet realistischer. 

De diepmenselijke noden of de spanning die nodig is om tot een krachtig verhaal te komen, ontbreken nu eenmaal. Smis is onvoldoende stilist of fictie-auteur om de personages echt tot leven te brengen. 

Interessant, maar niet echt een aanrader. 

 

Ugo Janssens - De Heidenen (Lannoo, 2009) ***

Het is een gigantisch werk om exact te weten hoe onze voorouders leefden in de eerste eeuwen van onze jaartelling, maar toch heeft Ugo Janssens dit kunnen realiseren, ondanks het gebrekkig en fragmentarisch bronnenmateriaal en archeologische vondsten. Het is ook niet altijd eenvoudig omdat de volkeren in onze contreien zelf verschilden: kelten, galliërs en franken waren allen Germanen, maar dat wil niet zeggen dat ze dezelfde goden en rituelen hadden. 

Het boek beschrijft in de mate van het mogelijke deze verschillen, maar ook de kerstening ten tijde vanaf de vierde eeuw, en dan finaal onder de Franken. 

Een mooie inleiding voor wie belangstelling heeft voor de geschiedenis van onze contreien: helder, overzichtelijk, en leerrijk. 

André De Vries - Brussels (Interlink, 2003) ***

In mijn reeks van Brussel-boeken, was dit het eerste, maar misschien het minst goede. Het is duidelijk geschreven voor buitenlandse toeristen, maar bevat toch interessante weetjes over de stad. 

Wat mij vooral stoort is de stereotypering van de Brusselaar, gebaseerd op historische perspectieven en oordelen van buitenaf, maar die in geen velden of wegen klopt met de realiteit van vandaag. 

Een goede inleiding voor wie Brussel niet kent. 

Thomas Pynchon - Shadow Ticket (Jonathan Cape, 2025) **

I am a big fan of Thomas Pynchon. "Gravity's Rainbow" will remain on my list of best novels ever, a book I've read five times. I loved "V", "Vineland" and "The Crying of Lot 49". He should have stopped writing a while ago. And just like Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this may be the one book too many in his list. 

"Shadow Ticket" is a caricature of Pynchon, with all the stylistic skill and well-known motifs, but with none of the real 'angst' or dread or paranoia or even sociopolitical significance of his earlier novels. Good artists should re-invent themselves all the time. In this book Pynchon uses his usual recipe to present us with some warmed-up meal that nobody is hungry for. 

Maartje van der Laak - Heksenjacht (Borgerhoff & Lamberigts, 2025) ****

Nederlands-Belgisch onderzoeker Maartje van de Laak heeft diep in de archieven van de Lage Landen gegraven om deze vreselijke periode uit onze geschiedenis op te diepen en weer tot leven te brengen. Dat is dan bijna letterlijk, door alle vrouwen - en ook mannen - die vals werden beschuldigd van omgang met de duivel opnieuw bij naam te noemen, hun context uit te leggen en ook de oordelen van de rechters weer te geven. Dit waren tijden van collectieve waanzin, bijgeloof, onverdraagzaamheid, armoede, tegenspoed en absolute wreedheid, met foltering tot er bekentenissen volgden en andere heksen werden verklikt. Door dit laatste vermenigvuldigde het aantal vrouwen dat ondervraagd en gefolterd en uiteindelijk werd verbrand. 

Eind 15e Eeuw werde de Heksenhamer gepubliceerd, de Maleus Maleficarum, die een handleiding bood om heksenpraktijken te herkennen, en die wereldse rechtbanken de argumentatie gaf om onschuldige vrouwen te bestraffen, vaak tot de dood. 

Van der Laak heeft hier duidelijk met hart en ziek aan gewerkt, en het resultaat mag er zeker zijn. Op het eind van het boek geeft ze een lange lijst, acht bladzijden lang, van alle vrouwen van wie ze informatie heeft kunnen opzoeken en die slachtoffer waren van de heksenjacht. Ze betreurt dat de beeldvorming nog altijd tot de stereotypering behoort in onze tijd, en dat in sommige steden en dorpen nog altijd folkoristische herdenkingen zijn van heksenverbrandingen. 

Gelukkig heeft ze het ook over de enkelingen die tegen de stroom durfden inzwemmen en de heksenjacht aan de kaak stelden, en die feiten en onderzoek belangrijker vonden dan valse beschuldigingen en bekentenissen onder foltering. 

Een praktijk om te testen of vrouwen heksen waren, was ze in het water te gooien om na te gaan of ze bleven drijven. Als ze zonken en verdronken, waren het geen heksen. Als ze boven water konden blijven, waren het wel heksen en werden ze verbrand. Ik had dit al gezien in Monty Python en dacht dat dit een grap was, maar blijkbaar was dit bittere realiteit in de late Middeleeuwen. Onze samenleving is er in onze contreien toch wat geëvolueerd, maar op vele plekken in de wereld is dit nog schering en inslag. 

De Geschiedenis van Brussel in Oude Kaarten (Lannoo, 2025) ****

Een prachtige uitgave van Lannoo met de evolutie van Brussel doorheen de tijd. Veel weten we niet van Brussel van voor de 10e eeuw, en de eerste kaarten dateren slechts uit de zestiende eeuw, maar uiteraard hebben geschiedkundigen de groei van de stad retrospectief in kaart kunnen brengen, figuurlijk dan vooral.

Naast de vele kaarten, is er ook een heel heldere en interessante uitleg van Brusselse geschiedkundigen. Het is opvallend hoe groen en landelijk onze hoofdstad nog was in de 19e eeuw, en hoe de expansie en verstedelijking is toegenomen in de laatste honderd jaar. 

Het is haast niet voor te stellen dat bvb Anderlecht en Molenbeek buiten de stad lagen of dat op de oevers van de Zenne de lakens te drogen lagen op gemeenschappelijke weiden. 

Een koffietafelboek om in een keer uit te lezen of om vaak in te bladeren. 

William A. Galston - Anger, Fear, Domination (Columbia University Press, 2025) ****

This is without a doubt one of the most interesting books I read about politics recently and possibly also the shortest. Despite its spectacular - and somewhat cheap - cover and title, the content is actually very scientific and deep. William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. 

He gives an overview on the emotions that drive human behaviour, and voting more specifically, highlighting that rationality and facts are less important factors. Galston posits that in threatening times, passions such as fear, humiliation, and resentment are more reliable motivators for voting or violence than empathy or solidarity. 

We are of course aware that Russia, Hungary and the Czech Republic used this rethoric to strengthen their grip on the populace, but increasingly the same tactics find their way into the political speech and speeches of the West, with Donald Trump and his administration being the best example of this. He compares this rhethoric to the speeches of FDR, Obama and other democratic leaders, who tried - or try? - to create a common future vision based on trust and facts, which are of course the first victims today:

"The truncation of trust in our time coincides with the dimin­ished role of persuasion through logic and evidence. Partisan polarization is part of the reason: to the extent that partisan affiliation shapes citizens' views, the space for persuasion narrows. Also at work is the much-discussed splitting of Americans into different epistemic communities with distinctive beliefs about what is true and false. Absent shared frames of reference and a commonly acknowledged pool of facts among citizens, rational persuasion collapses. The pathologies of our time - the selective suppression of information, the deliberate creation of conspiracy theories, the dissemination of outright lies - make a bad situa­tion worse. We are relearning the sad lesson of the years between the two world wars: no matter the truth of the claim, repetition can be the mother of persuasion." (p. 114)

This also means that we need to take public sentiment seriously by addressing the genuine concerns people face, as well as the fears they carry. 

In my view, it has become increasingly rare to find politicians who can articulate the bigger picture—leaders who draw on evidence to present a compelling vision of the future, grounded in collaboration, shared values, respect, and the creation of lasting value. It is far easier to appeal to our baser instincts: to frame politics as "us versus them," to fuel anger and distrust, and to exploit territorialism and discrimination.

Galston writes with remarkable clarity, developing his arguments in a way that is both accessible and intellectually rigorous. His analysis is well substantiated, thoughtful, and ultimately wise.

Highly recommended!