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MARIJKE SCHERMER Marijke Schermer is a novelist and playwright. Her stage work has been performed by several companies and translated into various languages. Her novel Breakwater was shortlisted for the ECI Literature Prize, has been sold to Spain, Switzerland, and Denmark, and is currently being made into a film. In 2019, her novel Love, If That's What It Is was published in Dutch (and subsequently in English by World Editions) and Schermer was hailed as ""fast becoming one of the most interesting writers in the Netherlands."" It was also shortlisted for the prestigious Libris Literature Prize 2020. LIZ WATERS After finishing her studies at the University of Manchester, Liz Waters worked for several years with English-language texts and at a literary agency in Amsterdam before becoming a full-time translator of literary fiction and non-fiction. Authors whose books she has translated include Lieve Joris, Jaap Scholten, Luuk van Middelaar, Annelies Verbeke, and Geert Mak.
Praise for Breakwater This writer knows what she's doing, that much is clear. Breakwater is a book that hurts. The supreme happiness and blunt violation of it are placed side by side with great precision. Ineluctably, it advances toward a climax. Now I want to read this writer's other work too. De Groene Amsterdammer Her second novel starts in an exemplary and classical fashion in all senses. Schermer work reminds one of Ian McEwan's. But with the ending she then mocks the classical form and norm. This is excellent literature. NRC What Marijke Schermer does in Breakwater is incredible. The story--in language that streams and flows and hits home--grows increasingly oppressive. MARJON KOK Every time I read the first chapter I honestly think: this is so good, this is so wonderful. I like everything about it. MARJA PRUIS An exemplary tale of lies and silence. De Limburger Praise for Love, If That's What It Is The author expertly humanizes each of the characters' desires and flaws as she illuminates the raw, inner workings of a broken marriage. This is as cathartic as it is gut-churning. ... A scintillating debut. Publishers Weekly In Love, If That's What It Is Marijke Schermer dissects ordinary family life so subtly and yet so vibrantly, that it leaves you out of breath and makes you reevaluate your own most self-evident assumptions. ROXANE VAN IPEREN, author of The High Nest Insightful and engrossing. The Herald Marijke Schermer flawlessly analyzes how love takes its course. Het Parool On every page Schermer excels with sentences that seem ordinary, but are packed with meaning. After every striking sentence, I had to put the book down for a while. This book is about love--if that's what it is, of course--and who has not become love's victim? Trouw Schermer's technical ingenuity traps you, making you question your standards, assumptions, and blind spots. This is a big and definitive, but also investigative, story about love. Schermer is fast becoming one of the most interesting writers in the Netherlands. NRC Handelsblad Love, If That's What It Is has the potential to become as successful as Herman Koch's The Dinner. De Standaard Schermer's fresh style adds something really new to the mountain of stories about falling in love, unhappy marriages, cheating, and heartbreak--she seems to have cleared the dust off the whole theme. De Volkskrant Schermer zooms in on the essential question of how autonomous you can still be when you live together. This novel has a careful and poetic style and is precise in its construction. Schermer effortlessly manages to infect you with the feelings of the novel's characters. Love, If That's What It Is paws and tugs at your fixed concepts. Tzum Stories about love and relationships have often been told, but Schermer's approach to these themes puts it all into a new light and cannot be compared with that of any other writer. Her work has been compared with Ian McEwan's, though, in which often a wrong step or decision radically alters a life for good. Literair Nederland
