Book Week pays tribute to first love

Book Week begins this Saturday. The 87th edition of the festival pays tribute to first love. Experience the theme with these six books.

Next Saturday the Book Week starts. The 87th edition of the book festival pays tribute to the 'First love'. From April 9 to 18, feelings and desires are central to this theme. Let love come to you with these six books. Text: Patrick Stoffer

Monterosso Mon Amour – Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

This year's Book Week gift is Monterosso Mon Amour. In the book you meet Carmen, a woman who is very active in the local library. She thinks back to her former family holiday in Italy, the place where she had her first kiss. Carmen travels to Monterosso again. Unexpectedly, she stays there a lot longer than originally intended...

A beautiful flaw – Arthur Japin

“This is all that matters, honey, that someone sees more in you than you knew was there.”  This sentence from the book was voted the most beautiful sentence about love in Dutch literature in the Netherlands. In “A Splendid Flaw,” Japin tells the story of Giacomo Casanova, a famous 18th century adventurer from Venice, through the eyes of Lucia, his first lover. Due to his reputation, Casanova's name remains linked to seducing women. In 2004 the novel was awarded the Libris Literature Prize.

At the edges of the day – Femke van der Laan

Candid report about the love between Femke and the late mayor of Amsterdam: Eberhard van der Laan: about happiness and arguments, birth and death. A unique look behind the scenes into the marriage of someone with a top public position: never before has 'the family of' been described in such a way from the inside. Femke and Eberhard meet while working at his law firm. They fall in love, move from house to house through the city, until they find a permanent place. They get married and have children. She works as a copywriter, he becomes a minister, then mayor. They see each other at the edges of the day. Femke van der Laan writes candidly and movingly about their great love and their struggle with time.

Fortuna's children – Annejet van der Zijl

Children of Fortune begins with adventurer Leon Herckenrath, who lost his heart to a young slave in 1818, and follows their eldest daughter and her Dutch husband during their adventures in Gold Rush California. And how did their descendants fare, with their unusual legacy of enormous wealth and black blood? An inspiring family saga about people who did not allow their lives to be limited by risks and their loves by the color of their skin.

You are not alone – Isa Hoes and Merlijn Kamerling

In their first joint book You are not alone, mother Isa Hoes and son Merlijn Kamerling describe what it is like to mourn someone who was very close to you. So close that when that person disappears, your life becomes completely different. In the case of Isa and Merlijn, that person was a husband and father, Antonie Kamerling, but this book is recognizable for anyone who has lost a brother, sister, child, parent or partner.

The Rose of Napoleon – Jacobine van den Hoek

France, 1790. The woman who would later become known as Joséphine Bonaparte flees from Martinique to Paris to escape the slave uprisings in the Caribbean. Her husband left her years ago, and she is on her own. Upon arrival, it also turns out to be unsafe for her and her children in Paris; the French Revolution has begun. When she is accused of being against the revolution, she ends up in one of the infamous prisons where royalists await their journey to the guillotine. Meanwhile, a young soldier, Napoleon, is looking for happiness and recognition in his own way. Like Joséphine, he has become lost in a rapidly changing world. When their paths cross, history changes.