Foreign rights guide London Book Fair 2024 New Non-fiction preview Ana van Es, The Baghdad-Berlin Express Bezige Bij * Reportage/history * 256 pages * May 2024 * Sample by David McKay * Edited Dutch ms available What does a hundred-year-old European railway line tell us about today's Arab world? We imagine the Middle East as a region full of war and chaos. But there’s also a train running through it, on a European railway line more than a century old that was built by Germans, British and French in search of oil, antiquities and virgin land. How does the colonial past work its way into today's Iraq and Syria? In The Baghdad-Berlin Express, former Middle East correspondent Ana van Es travels along this track, from the Persian Gulf through the former IS caliphate, with death never far away. But at Baghdad Central Station they also dare to dream: about returning tourists and a high-speed connection to Europe. For this book the author travelled to Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
Bart Van Loo, In the Footsteps of the Burgundians (original title: Stoute schoenen) Bezige Bij * history/travelogue* ca 800 pages, ill. * September 2024 * Designed sample chapters available Van Loo brings our distant past back to life by literally touching the Middle Ages Bart Van Loo’s upcoming book is a fascinating journey in time to the Late Middle Ages by the author of The Burgundians, of which over 375,000 copies were sold across Europe. The author goes on a quest for ancient ruins and castles, artefacts and works of art, travel routes and battle fields -from Bruges to Brussels, from Ghent to Gouda, from Namur to Nijmegen. Then he moves on to France, Switzerland and of course Burgundy itself, where it all began, to demonstrate that the ducal epos is also an elemental part of European history. In his acclaimed narrative style, Van Loo shows how these parts of Europe evolved during that era, from disintegration to a form of political, cultural and economic unity.
Non-fiction Anaïs van Ertvelde, Handicap Bezige Bij *Non-fiction * 252 pages * February 2024 * Sample by Anna Asbury How to belong in a world in which you do not naturally belong?
Anaïs Van Ertvelde was born with a short right forearm. A matter of course for her, she thought, but other people seemed to question it. At a certain point she discovered that there was much more behind that disability, in both personal and social terms. Van Ertvelde examines 'disability' as a political condition. She examins what the world tells us about disability and reveals what disability can tell us about the world. How disability affects our view of art, sex, work, intimacy, burnout, citizenship, resistance and who we are ourselves though we rarely realise it.
Fiction Lisa Weeda, Dance, Dance, Revolution Bezige Bij * Rights sold: Kanon Verlag (Germany) * Fiction, 238 pages * February 2024 * Sample by Michele Hutchison Imagine you could end a war with your dance
Lisa Weeda's novel Aleksandra caused a sensation, now she presents her new book Dance, Dance, Revolution - a bold, novel experiment that calls on us to keep moving for peace. Because dance knows no language, no borders. It is the night in which evil is exorcised. Baba Yara lifts the pale moon out of the blackness with ease. Then she begins to dance. Baba Yara will save us! With her dance she can bring people back to life. The bad dead, all those who have left us too soon. Who wouldn't want that? This experiment challenges us to keep moving for peace.