Fien Veldman (1990) is 2022's recipient of the Joost Zwagerman Essay-award for her essay ‘Not really making it’, about growing up in a working-class neighbourhood in Leeuwarden. In 2018 she won the Elise Mathilde Essay Award for her essay ‘Borders, doors and eyes open’. From 2010 until 2016, she worked as a theatre critic. (And, of course, she has also worked in customer service.) Hard Copy is her debut novel.
Despite its whimsical premise, Hard Copy is at its heart a joyful, tender, and strangely relatable novel. With sharp, playful prose Veldman tells a story in equal parts searing intelligence and madcap sweetness. Simply brilliant. -- Jenny Mustard, author of Okay Days This novel has it all. It's smart, captivating, poignant, absurd, moving, and terribly funny. * Jente Posthuma, author of What I'd Rather Not Think About * Intimate and surprising at every turn, Hard Copy's distinct narrative voice took me right in from page one. A truly one-of-a-kind novel: I loved it. -- Sarah Maria Griffin, author of Other Words for Smoke Rounded with sharp observations and surprising humour, Hard Copy is an incisive commentary on social isolation – a young woman’s desperate search for connection in these late-capitalist times. * Anindita Ghose, author of The Illuminated * 'Many astute observations about loneliness [and] class attitudes... very funny on the tedium of office life.' * Irish Independent * A talented new voice worth paying attention to. * Irish Times * Dryly comic... You regularly wonder who is more disturbed here, the protagonist or society. * Het Parool * A weird, understated and very well written book about a millennial meltdown * Havermelkelite * A beautiful, at times absurdist and moving debut * Boekblad * In clear, bright language, Fien Veldman accurately depicts a world, a social background, that eats its way through the individual... A novel like an autopsy. -- Manon Uphoff Absurdist and inventive. Fien Veldman knows how to deal with contemporary cultural phenomena, and she always approaches them astutely and surprisingly' * Tzum * Wondrous * Noordhollands Dagblad * A beautiful book * Friesch Dagblad * Hard Copy is a wonderfully entertaining novel about the struggle to build relationships when one’s formative years have already warped their foundation. In a world where machines steadily replace human labour, Veldman explores the search for connections that may not exist and a new, hopefully better reality... bizarre yet poignant' * Daily Dispatch *