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GRIP
LONGLISTED FOR THE GOUDEN BOEKENUIL PRIZE 2012
LONGLISTED FOR LIBRIS LITERATURE PRIZE 2012
20 years after their university years and first climbs as a group of alpinists, Vincent, Martin, Paul and Lotte are going to be reunited. An incident way back then, on the Lofoten mountains in Norway, above the artic circle, altered their lives in dramatic ways. Confusion still reigns about what really happened there, and in the run up to the reunion the past is illuminated by each of them in new and often humiliating ways. Three men in love with the same woman, this is a climbing novel as well as a gripping tale of friendship and passion. Enter is a prose artist, you'll want to reread this finally crafted novel immediately on finishing.
'Classic, rich and profound.' Trouw
'Reminiscent of W.F. Hermans. Enter achieves, with his vivid writing style, immortality.' Het Parool
'This is a classically constructed novel in which Enter's style combines with a flawless composition, strong characters, existential themes and a brilliant climax.' NRC
'Extraordinarily gripping... The novel is definitely not dead, thank goodness.' Nederlandse Dagblad
'Stephan Enter has written a superior timeless novel about time... in brilliantly formed sentences. Crystal clear and yet filled with empathy.' De Pers
'A flawless stylist who lifts up worlds with his well chosen sentences, twirls them around before your stunned eyes, to then playful let them slip away. Not by endless tricks of language, but just by writing really well and very precisely, with exact imagery.' Reformatorish Dagblad
'An instant classic that has allowed the year to end with a literary Mount Everest: the brilliant GRIP by Stephan Enter.' NRC Handelsblad
Picked as one of the three best books of 2011 by De Volkskrant
Uitgeverij Van Oorschot NL
Berlin Verlag Germany
Iperborea Italy
Font Forlag Norway
Material: Dutch edition (183pp); English sample.
GAME tells the story of Norbert Vijgh’s as he grows up in a protestant village on the Veluwe. We follow him from his ninth to his nineteenth year. Each of the chapters involves a game. From playing cowboys and indians in the forest to mischief on the building site. But for Norbert these are serious games that teach him about the world. The first story hits you like a sledgehammer. It is a very simple tale about a boy who plays indians in a wood near a village on the Veluwe, a meeting with an African who is following a course locally; the establishment of a kind of friendship, after which at an unfortunate moment the African departs. GAME is written in a sensual, playful style that changes with each chapter. Through both the style and the story Enter expertly evokes the emotions and feelings of youth.
‘This whole book is for me a paradise of sensual sensations. Game is beautiful, tender, impressive’ Jan Siebelink
‘Enter is an extraordinarily good writer.’ Het Parool
‘The story is beautiful written with a great sensibility for the physical surroundings. Enter writes magnificent rhythmic sentences.’ NRC
‘Both for his first novel and his second (Winter Hands 1999 and Lightyears 2004) Enter was nominated for the Libris Prize. Without any doubt Game will earn him a place on the 2008 shortlist. It deserves this prize twice over.’ Nord Hollands Dagblad
Uitgeverij Van Oorschot NL
Berlin Verlag Germany
Chapter to appear in Words Without Borders
Chapter in Dalkey Archive Best European Fiction anthology
Turbine Forlaget Denmark
Material: Dutch edition (269pp); German edition.
NOMINATED FOR THE LIBRIS PRIZE AND THE GERARD WALSCHAP PRIZE
'In LIGHTYEARS Stephan Enter plays continually on two time levels. On one side there is the story of the present, the protagonist who faces the initiation ritual of his doctoral presentation and inadvertently is sucked into a series of happenings in which the ghosts of his past keep playing a central role. On the other side the researcher - who through his telescope studies events which took place in the universe a long time ago - relives his own past in the smallest details. The almost sensuous precision of the cherished memories show the cracks in that picture. LIGHTYEARS looks for a lost love, but at the same time asks how the relationship between two people fell apart and if the intensity of the love was perhaps to blame. Stephan Enter elaborates that classic theme subtly, through a play of motives and memories which make his novel into an enigmatic puzzle of elements. He avoids all superficial sentiment. The sentences are strung together associatively, in a slow rhythm, through his precise use of language, his continuous nuances and repetitions. This makes LIGHTYEARS a particularly successful and layered novel which compels to rereading, rethinking and retaining.' Libris Prize Jury report
Uitgeverij Van Oorschot NL
Material: Dutch edition (320pp).