![]() A shadow glimpsed outside the house a ring on the doorbell at night a phone call where nobody speaks… Eventually, the stranger announces herself. The days go by without much change in Helmer’s life, despite the changing demands of the seasons – that is, until the farmer begins to suspect that someone is trying to contact him. ![]() In fact, he appears to harbour deep-seated resentment towards his father, keeping the frail old man locked up in an upstairs bedroom. With his mother and his twin brother, Henk, both long dead, you would think that Helmer would be more friendly to his last remaining family member. ![]() It’s set in the Dutch countryside, where Helmer, a fifty-something farmer, lives in his family’s big, old house, with only his aged father for company. The Twin (translated by David Colmer) was writer Gerbrand Bakker’s first novel for adults, and as you can see on the sticker in the picture, it won the IMPAC Dublin Prize in 2010. ![]() I recently received a copy of The Twin from a kind Twitter follower ( who had just finished it (thank you!), so when Iris announced that this would be one of the readalong choices, the only thing to do was start reading it □ Surprisingly though, the matter of what to read was also taken out of my hands. ![]() I’m very keen to take part in blog events for translated fiction, so I was always going to find something for Dutch Lit Fortnight, hosted by Iris on Books. ![]()
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