 or click on one of the ticket options below to navigate directly to your ticket of choice in Stager. 

Margo Jefferson is a professor at Columbia University School of Arts and writes for 

. She received the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1995 and her 2017 memoir 

 received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.

, In its pages, Jefferson splinters and then rebuilds herself by weaving her acclaimed criticism with the words of deceased relatives, descriptions of key moments in her life, and dramatized accounts from the people who accompanied her in her loneliness. Bing Crosby and Ike Turner are among the author’s alter egos, in a wildly innovative work of depth and stirring beauty which explores what a Black female body can be.


Mischa Blok

Margo Jefferson

Crossing Border is hugely excited to announce that BorderKitchen will be hosting the first interview and book launch for legendary Dutch author 

 as he presents his most ambitious novel yet: 

 examining the life and times of the most beautiful man in classical Greece.

This monumental, richly documented historical novel – published May 23 – tells the true story of the struggles and failures of Alkibiades, the extravagant, dazzling, androgynous, bisexual, and controversial politician and strategist of Athens during the great war against Sparta. His story is a journey through time plunging us back nearly two and a half millennia to the decline of democracy in Athens, in a story with unmistakable modern parallels.

What role did Alkibiades play in this decline? Was he a populist who dismantled democracy, or could he have been the saviour of Athens? 

 is both a learned historical study and a great novel for our time and every time, telling a story as unique as it is universal about the pursuit of ambition in an imperfect world. Find out more at: 



At this special BorderKitchen book launch event, 

 will conduct the first interview with Pfeijffer about 

 followed by a book signing by Pfeijffer.



Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer is a poet, classicist and the author of modern classics such as La Superba, Letters from Genoa and Grand Hotel Europa.

Jelle van Riet

Nikos Xanthoulis

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

It’s a bold move to imagine a fictionalised Russian President Vladimir Putin in today’s highly-charged geo-political environment, but that’s exactly what Italian-Swiss essayist, writer, and former political advisor Giuliano da Empoli has done in his novel, 

. And his gamble has paid off, with the novel achieving bestseller status in France.

 last October – takes the reader to the dark heart of power in Putin’s Russia, where oligarchs and confidants battle it out for a slice of money and power. We meet Vadim Baranov, a former theatre director and reality show producer who becomes the primary ideologue for the Putin regime. Chief orchestrator of the violence, manipulation and disinformation that constitutes Putin's power, Baranov has a front row seat to the defining moments in modern Russian history, including efforts to sow division in Ukraine. But what happens when his rapport with the new tsar begins to show cracks?

Da Empoli is the director of the Volta think tank in Milan and teaches at Sciences Po in Paris. 

 is partly based on conversations he had with real-life former Kremlin spin doctor, Vladislav Surkov.

Giuliano da Empoli brings his bold Putin novel to Border Kitchen
10 May, 20.00: @ BorderKitchen

Laura de Jong

Giuliano da Empoli

Anthony Award-winning US writer S.A. Cosby will be joining us on April 13 to talk about his latest novel, 

. The author from Southeastern Virginia is hailed as a master of the ‘Southern Noir’ crime genre, and his second book 

was a New York Times bestseller. In his third novel 

, published in 2021 and recently translated into Dutch, Cosby explores the story of two fathers of a murdered multi-racial gay couple. Both fathers – one Black and one white – have their own criminal pasts and personal demons, but bonded by a love for their dead sons, they band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.

Thomas Heerma van Voss

S.A. Cosby

, one of South Korea's most acclaimed young writers. Growing up in conservative Daegu, he moved to Seoul in his twenties to study French and journalism.

His first novel 

 was one of the best-selling debuts in South Korea in recent years, and the English edition was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022. Now he presents his new novel, 

, translated into Dutch by Mattho Mandersloot.

Set in Park’s birthplace of Daegu, the discovery of a body at the bottom of a lake pulls a star psychologist back into a past he thought he had left behind. An anonymous message about the grisly discovery stirs the protagonist’s memories of his troubled teenage years, and the evening classes where he fell in love with another man for the first time. 

 is an unmissable novel, both an exciting murder mystery and a relatable coming-of-age tale from one of South Korea's most promising contemporary writers.

Mattho Mandersloot

Sang Young Park

Booker-prize winning New Zealand author Eleanor Catton will join BorderKitchen on March 24 to talk about her new novel, 

. Catton shot to fame when her second novel 

 won the Booker Prize in 2013, making the then 28-year-old one of the youngest winners of the prestigious prize. Now she returns with 

, a gripping and unusual psychological thriller which immerses the reader in the world of a guerrilla gardening collective in New Zealand. The collective comes to the attention of a mysterious American billionaire when a landslide cuts off a remote farm, and both parties share a common interest in protecting the land. Exploring pertinent themes including environmental degradation, apocalyptic visions, and the human impulse to survive, 

 is a welcome return for this intriguing and versatile author.

Toef Jaeger

Eleanor Catton

The new book is for sale at the Other World Bookshop during the event

BRET EASTON ELLIS is the author of six novels, a collection of essays, and a collection of stories, which have been translated into thirty-two languages.When Ellis was 21, his first novel, the controversial bestseller 

 (1991), was the most controversial novel of the nineties. He currently lives in Los Angeles.


Bret Easton Ellis' masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.

Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret's obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them, and Bret in particular, with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends, or his own mind, to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.

Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero L.A., The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at seventeen, sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting, and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.

Roderik Six

Bret Easton Ellis

Paolo Giordano won many awards for his debut novel 

(2009), which has been published in more than forty countries. Other novels include 

Award-winning Italian author Paolo Giordano will be joining us at Border Kitchen to discuss his new novel 

, an exploration of hope, doubt and longing in uncertain times. In 

, we meet a man who grapples with the fact that he may never become a father, and is confronted with doubts and temptations as he searches for balance in his marriage. The novel raises vital questions about how you deal with the fear and vulnerability that can overwhelm you when you lose control of the world around you.

 is a lively and sensitive novel from an author with an empathetic approach to life today in all its facets – faith, science, climate, parenting, love. Giordano describes how we are all looking for a place -- our own Tasmania -- where a future is still possible.

Theo Hakkert

Paolo Giordano

“No one leaves home unless there's a shark's mouth at home.” With these words, among other things, the young Somali-British poet Warsan Shire touched a nerve in the middle of the European refugee crisis in 2015. Her poem 'Home' was shared worldwide as a call for a more humane policy and instantly made Shire famous. Shire writes about her own experiences as a migrant, about not feeling at home anywhere, about war, sex and being a woman. Drawing on her own life and that of her loved ones, pop culture and media headlines, Shire's highly anticipated debut collection 

 brings to life the lives of refugees and migrants, mothers and daughters, black women and teenage girls in beautiful poems.

Shire (1988) was born in Kenya to Somali parents and migrated to England when she was one year old. The poems she published online attracted tens of thousands of followers on social media. She became London's first-ever Young People's Poet Laureate, she received the African Poetry Prize and she became the youngest person ever to be named Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. In 2016, Shire co-wrote Beyoncé's album Lemonade and reached millions of new fans. Bless the daughter is translated by Radna Fabias (1983), born and raised in Curaçao. Fabias made her debut as a poet with Habitus, with which she won the C. Buddingh' Prize, the Awater Poetry Prize, the Herman de Coninck Prize and the Grote Poëzie Prize.

Hodan Warsame

Warsan Shire

Guillermo Arriaga (1958, Mexico City) is an author, screenwriter and film director and producer. At thirteen, he lost his sense of smell in a street fight, which would later serve as one of the inspirations for his work. Arriaga is a born storyteller. He once stated: “If I don't tell stories, the stories come to me to grab me by the throat and literally kill me. It is part of my organism.” 

He is known for the award-winning films 

 was highly acclaimed. In this novel we meet Marina, dancer and choreographer, married and mother of two children. She belongs to the very privileged upper class of society. She meets José Cuauhtémoc in prison. He is serving a long prison sentence but enjoyed an excellent upbringing. A scorching love affair follows. Arriaga portrays the corruption and enormous social inequality in Mexico and the deepest contradictions of human nature. 

 is an epic of passion, violence, and love.

BORDERKITCHEN AND HET FILMHUIS PRESENT GUILLERMO ARRIAGA



On Monday 19 September, het filmhuis will host idiosyncratic writer, screenwriter and director Guillermo Arriaga. Guillermo Arriaga at het flimhuis.

The programme starts at 5:00 PM with the Arriaga-directed short film No One Left Behind (2019). Afterwards there is an interview with Arriaga by Quinten Wys and the audience. A translation of his novel 

 was recently published in the Netherlands. After the event the book is for sale, and Arriaga will hold a signing session.

Quinten Wys

Guillermo Arriaga

When Orhan Pamuk was asked last year whether he thought it was strange that his novel about an epidemic Nights of the Plague came out during the corona pandemic, he answered: "When I began four and a half years ago, my friends asked me why I was writing a novel on an obscure subject… The plague was gone and humanity had left these ugly things behind. I started to believe them, but I was determined to write this novel. So no, I did not anticipate this pandemic, but there is no history of humanity without pandemics.” Nights of the Plague takes place on Minger Island, during a plague epidemic in 1901. Sultan Abdülhamit seals off the island to prevent further spread. But is the death of a health inspector a random murder or part of a bigger plan? The sultan asks his niece and her husband to go to the island and find out. Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952. His first novel won many prizes in Turkey. His breakthrough in Turkey and the rest of the world came with The Black Book. His The New Life, My name is Red, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence were also lauded. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and in 2006 Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The two Dutch translators of Pamuk, Margreet Dorleijn and Hanneke van der Heijden, will receive the Martinus Nijhoff Vertaalprijs this year, the most important Dutch award for translators.

Due to his extremely busy schedule, it is too much for Orhan Pamuk to sign books after the event. We hope you understand. The new book is for sale in the theater.

Michel Krielaars

Orhan Pamuk

 (1972) grew up till his seventh in the shadow of an enormous Lenin statue in St. Petersburg, he spent the next seven years in a New York apartment without TV. A trip to Prague in the nineties was the inspirational source for the imaginary city of Prava in his debut novel The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002).

At BorderKitchen, Shteyngart will present his recently published Our Country Friends (2021). In it we follow a diverse group of old friends, among them a Russian writer, a psychiatrist, an app developer and a film star, sit out the pandemic in a remote country house. Old wounds are torn open and new romances erupt. ‘A powerful fable of our broken time’, commented Salman Rushdie.

Arno Wielders

Gary Shteyngart

 (1971) decides to write a new thriller, how she does it already sounds like the opening chapter of one of her novels. She retreats for weeks on end in a small cabin somewhere in the Georgia woods and sees or talks to no one until the book is finished. This recipe has proven itself with a blood curdling series of thrillers that have been sold more than 40 million times in 120 countries, rightly earning her the nickname ‘Queen of Crime’.



Visitors of BorderKitchen have a scoop: the Dutch translation of her latest book  has rolled off the press the day before.

Karin Slaughter

Jennifer Egan (1962) lives in Brooklyn, New York She is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her previous novel, 

, won many literary prizes, most notable the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was recently named one of the best books of the decade by Time Magazine and several others.

Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times, The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine. Her new novel is 

 opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis.” Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. It’s 2010. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

In spellbinding interlocking narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling, 

 is also extraordinarily moving, a testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,” those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets.

Roos van Rijswijk

Jennifer Egan

Torrey Peters studied creative writing in Iowa among other places and has previously written two novels. 

 marked her international breakthrough. The novel was longlisted for the Women's Prize in 2021. Peters lives in Brooklyn, New York.


Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn't hate. She'd scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart, and three years on, Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina's pregnant. Could the three of them form an unconventional family - and raise the baby together?

Persis Bekkering

Torrey Peters 

Alex Desmedt is bezeten door toneel. In Antwerpen werkt hij zich vlak voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog op tot directeur van het grootste stadstheater. Hij viert triomfen, mede dankzij zijn vrouw, sterspeelster Lea Liebermann. Hij introduceert ook technische hoogstandjes, zoals een reusachtige schijf als extra bühne óp de bühne. Dan breekt de bezetting uit. Alex wordt als directeur-generaal van meerdere Antwerpse theaters gehinderd door zware beperkingen. Zijn broer, componist en dirigent Rik Desmedt, kiest voluit voor collaboratie, terwijl Lea, die niet meer mag acteren, ronddwaalt in een stad waar razzia’s het leven kosten aan duizenden. Kort vóór de bevrijding wordt Alex uitgenodigd voor een delicate opdracht in Den Haag. Twee beroemde partijgenoten van Adolf Hitler zullen in de stadsschouwburg de opening bijwonen van het pas opgerichte Deutsches Theater in den Niederlanden. In de bevrijde thuishaven belooft de afrekening bijzonder bloedig te worden..



 is een van de meest veelzijdige en gelauwerde auteurs van ons taalgebied. Hij ontving voor zijn oeuvre zowel de Gouden Ganzenveer als de Constantijn Huygensprijs. Zeven van zijn romans vormden de basis van een film of een tv-serie en er is werk van hem vertaald en gespeeld in meer dan vijftien talen. Hij schreef eerder het Boekenweek- en het Poëziegeschenk en staat ook bekend als performer en polemist. Hij leeft en werkt in Antwerpen en Kaapstad.

“In 2020 hadden we een eerste lezing van mijn Faustbewerking OustFaust in de Ida Wassermanfoyer van de Koninklijke Schouwburg. Wasserman was een groot actrice die tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog als Jodin niet mocht spelen in Antwerpen en na de oorlog een ster werd in Den Haag. Na afloop hoorde ik: ‘Je weet toch dat hier van 1942 tot 1944 het Deutsches Theater in den Niederlanden was gevestigd? In de kelders liggen nog de restanten van het grote draaipodium.’ Ik wilde al twintig jaar een roman schrijven over collaboratie, het liefst in de kunsten, dus dicht bij mezelf. Ik zag die machinerie en alles viel op zijn plaats.”

Tom Lanoye leest exclusief voor uit zijn nieuwe roman 

, die zich voor een groot deel afspeelt in de Koninklijke Schouwburg. Voorafgaand gaat hij in gesprek met dramaturg Remco van Rijn. De lezing vindt plaats in het decor van onze nieuwe voorstelling 

 (de fonkelende nieuwe Faustbewerking die Lanoye schreef en nu te zien is in de theaters) récht boven de plek waaraan de roman zijn titel ontleent.

Tom Lanoye

Lenny Kaye

In collaboration with CPNB and De Bezige Bij

Especially for the launch of the gift book The Jealousy Man, bestselling author Jo Nesbø comes over from Norway to meet his Dutch fans. Between 1 – 10 November you receive the special edition of Nesbø’s The Jealousy Man (De jaloezieman, translated by Annelies de Vroom), if you spend 15 euros or more at a bookstore. The initiative with this special gift book marks the start of the gift campaign ‘Give more with a book’ of the CPNB foundation.


On the small Greek island of Kalymnos near Kos, a German tourist disappears without a trace after going for an early-morning swim in the sea. Witnesses state that the man was fighting with his twin brother the night before his disappearance. The local police is puzzled; there is no body, and no trace of foul play. They still have their suspicions about the case and request the help of inspector Nikos Balli. He is known as the jealousy man and specialized in solving murders in which jealousy appears to be the main motive. Nikos flies to Kalymnos and interrogates Franz Schmid, the brother of the missing Julian. The men have come to the island to climb, a sport the inspector is very familiar with. Nikos is enthralled by the mystery. What went wrong between the brothers? And why does it remind him so strongly of a dark secret in his own life?

Jo Nesbø is Norway’s most successful thriller author. His work was published in over fifty countries, was awarded many times and the film rights for several books have been sold. He sold over 45 million copies worldwide. Nesbø wrote the world-famous Harry Hole series, various standalone thrillers and the children’s book series Doctor Proctor. His thriller Knife (2019) was selected by The Times as one of the top 10 thrillers of the past decade. At the end of May his latest thriller The Kingdom was published, which has been featured in the Dutch Bestseller 60 ever since.

On Friday 29 October, the great Scandinavian thriller author Jo Nesbø comes to BorderKitchen!


Entrance is only possible if you can prove at the door that you have no corona. You can do so by showing a proof of vaccination, proof of recovery or an official test for entry and an ID. More information on www.testenvoortoegang.nl.

Frank Evenblij

Jo Nesbø

Stevie Van Zandt

Books from Jonathan Coe can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag.

Books from Jonathan Coe can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag.

In the summer of 1977, a naïve young woman called Calista sets out for a trip around the world. Travelling through the United States, she ends up on a Greek island that has been turned into a film set. There she ends up working for the famous director Billy Wilder, about whom she knows next to nothing. But the time she spends in this luxurious, unfamiliar place will change her life for good. While Calista enjoys her adventure, Wilder realizes that his star is on the wane. Rebuffed by Hollywood, he had his new film financed by German producers. When Calista follows him to München to shoot some extra scenes, she finds herself joining him on a journey into the dark heart of Wilder’s family history.

Mr Wilder and Me is at once a tender coming-of-age story and an intimate portrait of one of cinema’s most intriguing figures. The British master storyteller Jonathan Coe writes captivatingly about the passage of time and fame, the importance of family, and the dangerous appeal of nostalgia.

Jonathan Coe (Birmingham, 1961) is the author of many highly successful novels, including What a carve up!, The house of sleep, The Rotters’ club, The closed circle, The terrible privacy of Maxwell Sim, and Expo 58. His biography of the author B. S. Johnson was awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize. Jonathan Coe lives and works in London.

 will be interviewed by film freak, film critic and booklover Gerlinda Heywegen.

Jonathan Coe

Books from Isabel Allende can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag

Books from Isabel Allende can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag

‘When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,’ begins Isabel Allende her new book. Ever since childhood, she was adamant to provide for herself. Now she is world-famous, the diplomate’s daughter who became the first Latin-American woman to reach an audience of hundreds of millions of readers. With her love stories and historical novels, she introduced her readers to South America, the complex, enchanting continent that is so tied up with her personal history. Allende was born in 1942 in Peru, from Chilean parents. After the military coup in Chili in 1973, during which her uncle, president Salvador Allende was murdered, she relocated to Venezuela.

In ‘The soul of a woman’ the author, today based in California, explores the central role of feminism in her life. When she was in her twenties, during the first wave of feminism, she worked for a Chilean feminist magazine, where she ‘sharpened her pen to defy the male establishment’. In her new book, she pays homage to the important women in her life, including her mother Panchita and daughter Paula, but also to authors such as Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood, who inspired her to fight for women’s rights. She writes passionately, but not without irony and a sense of humor, about topics as varied as #metoo, aging, the pandemic, and romantic love. Allende: ‘I don’t have to please men anymore’.

During this free online BorderKitchen, Isabel Allende will be interviewed by Ronit Palache about 'The Soul of a Woman'. After the 45 minute interview, there will be an opportunity for viewers to ask questions.

Ronit Palache

Isabel Allende

Books from T.C. Boyle can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag.

T.C. Boyle (1948, Peekskill, N.Y) is a New York Times bestselling author and has published more than fourteen novels and eleven collections of short stories. He’s won many awards, among them the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and a Lifetime Achievement Award. Boyle lives in California.

Guy Schermerhorn, brilliant young professor of psychology and disciple of the pioneering Dr Moncrieff, is making a name for himself on the talk show circuit with an unusual protégé in tow: a chimp by the name of Sam. Sam lives in Guy's apartment, wears diapers and neckties, devours pizza and Macdonalds – and, through Guy's careful training, can communicate through sign language.

But living with Sam is wreaking havoc on Guy's personal life, and when shy, meek undergraduate Aimee Villard volunteers to take on babysitting for him, he can't believe his luck. Aimee and Sam have an immediate rapport, and before Guy knows it she's moved in, proudly devoting herself to Sam's care and Guy's project.

Aimee has never known purpose and happiness like this; but when Guy's funding is imperilled, and Sam is taken away by the sinister Moncrief, her world falls apart. Aimee discovers just how far she'll go to, and just what she'll risk, to be united with the chimp she's come to love so much.

A message from T.C. Boyle to his readers:

"Our consciousness is the most important thing we have. We are always present, bubbling with ideas, thoughts, wishes, and language is what allows us to do so. Animals have to be careful when they come near us.

Many of them end up in a pan, on a barbecue, or are run over.

But they too have a consciousness and their own view of the world.

But they can’t tell us about it. But what if they could? What if we can teach them our language? What if they speak the words we don't want to hear? "

Sander Pleij

T.C. Boyle

Books from C Pam Zhang can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag.

 follows two recently orphaned children of immigrants on the run, trying not just to survive but to find a home. The novel is set against the twilight of the American gold rush.

 is inspired by Zhang's childhood of moving homes often. It reckons with the grief she experienced after losing her father when she was twenty-two.


“Outstanding.” —The Washington Post

"C Pam Zhang’s arresting, beautiful first novel is filled with myths of her own making as well as sorrows and joys." —The New York Times

“One of my favourite books in 202” - Barack Obama

“Revolutionary . . . A visionary addition to American literature.” —Star Tribune

An electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape—trying not just to survive but to find a home.

Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.

Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and reimagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it’s about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.

C Pam Zhang is an American writer whose debut novel How Much of These Hills is Gold was released in 2020, and was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize. Zhang was born in Beijing and moved to the United States when she was four years old. While growing up, she moved to ten new homes by the time she was eighteen.

On Tuesday 2 March we will welcome C Pam Zhang for a free online BorderKitchen interview. After the interview, viewers will have the opportunity to ask questions.

C Pam Zhang

Books from DBC Pierre can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag.

is an Australian-born writer currently residing in Ireland. Born Peter Warren Finlay, the "DBC" stands for "Dirty But Clean". "Pierre" was a nickname bestowed on him by childhood friends after a cartoon character of that name.

Pierre was awarded the Booker Prize for fiction in 2003 for his novel 

. He is the third Australian to be so honoured, although he has told the British press that he prefers to consider himself a Mexican.

 is due to be released in January 2021. During the BorderKitchen interview, the author will be interviewed about this new novel, as well as his previous work.

It's a big bad world out there, in Dopamine City. All Lonnie Cush wants is to keep his kids safe. But Shelby-Ann - his little girl, the maddening apple of his eye - has other ideas: Shelby-Ann wants her first smartphone. So new realities are rocketing their way to 37 Palisade Row, where everything will change, every day, and at mortal speed. Until Lonnie finds himself in a stitch: he'll have to join this new world, or wither in it. Or can he mastermind a vanishing act? The story of a hapless father's love and loss, and a speedball, starburst satire, Meanwhile in Dopamine City is a passionate, freewheeling work from the winner of the Booker Prize: a riotous cry for the soul and the flesh and the heart in the cooling bathwater of our automatic times.

DBC Pierre

In cooperation with Uitgeverij Nieuw Amsterdam.

 (1968) was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She lives in the United States, where she is a professor at the University of California. She is the author of four novels, including 

 has won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Salman Rushdie: “Laila Lalami has fashioned an absorbing story of one of the first encounters between Spanish conquistadors and Native Americans, a frightening, brutal, and much-falsified history that here, in her brilliantly imagined fiction, is rewritten to give us something that feels very like the truth.”

In 1527, the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez sailed from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda with a crew of six hundred men and nearly a hundred horses. His goal was to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Spanish crown and, in the process, become as wealthy and famous as Hernán Cortés.

But from the moment the Narváez expedition landed in Florida, it faced peril—navigational errors, disease, starvation, as well as resistance from indigenous tribes. Within a year there were only four survivors: the expedition’s treasurer, Cabeza de Vaca; a Spanish nobleman named Alonso del Castillo; a young explorer named Andrés Dorantes; and Dorantes’s Moroccan slave, Mustafa al-Zamori, whom the other three Spaniards called Estebanico. These four survivors would go on to make a journey across America that would transform them from proud conquistadores to humble servants, from fearful outcasts to faith healers.

The Moor’s Account brilliantly captures Estebanico’s voice and vision, giving us an alternate narrative for this famed expedition.

As this dramatic chronicle unfolds, we come to understand that, contrary to popular belief, black men played a significant part in New World exploration, and that Native American men and women were not merely silent witnesses to it.

In Laila Lalami’s deft hands, Estebanico’s memoir illuminates the ways in which stories can transmigrate into history, even as storytelling can offer a chance at redemption and survival.


Free- online BorderKitchen with author Laila Lalami.

We are very happy to announce we will continue online with BorderKitchen and will regularly livestream interviews, readings and (hopefully) some out of this world freestyle performances of exciting international authors.

On the 23rd of September, a new online BorderKitchen will revolve around The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami. In this stunning work of historical fiction, Laila Lalami brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America, a Moroccan slave whose testimony was left out of the official record.

Nancy Jouwe

Laila Lalami (1968) was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She lives in the United States, where she is a professor at the University of California. She is the author of four novels, including 

Laila Lalami

Books from Slimani can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag

1946. The young, French, Mathilde falls head over heels for Amine, a Moroccan officer of the French army. They get married and leave for a secluded family farm, hours from Rabat. How can their love, which is constantly being tested, stand the test of time?

Mathilde is the first part of the ‘The Land of the Others’-trilogy. The story was based on her family history and entered the French bestseller charts at number one.

Leila Slimani (Morocco, 1981) is the bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny, winner of the Prix Goncourt, and Adèle, for which she won the La Mamounia Prize.

Sex and Lies, a bundle of true stories of women’s intimate lives in the Arab world, was nominated for the Prix Renaudot de l’essai.

A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she spearheaded a campaign–for which she won the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for women’s freedom–to help Moroccan women speak out, as self-declared outlaws, against their country’s “unfair and obsolete laws.” Slimani wants to contribute to the development of a free society with equal rights for men and women.

She is French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she now lives in Paris with her French husband and their two young children.


Free- online BorderKitchen with author Leïla Slimani.

Tuesday the 16th of June, we’ll be welcoming bestselling author Leila Slimani (The Perfect Nanny, Adèle) for a free online BorderKitchen. She will be interviewed by Margot Dijkgraaf about her new book, Mathilde. At the end of the interview, viewers will be given the opportunity to ask questions to the author and human rights activist.

Margot Dijkgraaf

Leïla Slimani

Books from Baram can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag

Books from Baram can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag. 

Nir Baram (1976) is one of the most well known writers of Israel. He published four novels and his nonfiction appeared in magazines and newspapers, like The New Yorker and NRC Handelsblad.

Nir Baram is one of the most exciting voices of contemporary Israeli literature. He is actually somewhat of a superstar: his non-fiction appeared all across the globe. In these works he tirelessly describes how one lives in a country that is torn apart between two sides. For one year he travelled through the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This resulted in the international best-selling book 

In some ways, Baram’s work is a companion piece to that of Etgar Keret, Israel’s other star writer. But where Keret is a master of the slightly surreal, and mostly writes short stories, Baram has his feet firmly on the ground, and offers a more realistic approach. Both writers manage to paint a deeply human portrait of contemporary life in Israel and Palestine.

. It tells the story of Jonatan, a writer. One day he wakes up in a hotel room. He has no clue what has happened, or how he got there in the first place. To add insult to injury, people tell him that he has been telling the lie that his best friend Joel has died. Baram then takes the reader on a journey through Jonatan’s past. We learn of his friendship with Joel and of his upbringing in the city of Jerusalem. We meet his dysfunctional family. He constantly bickers with his older brother, and his mother gets terminally ill. 

 is a parable that tells the tale of living in an extremely intense culture.


Free- online BorderKitchen with author Nir Baram.

The interview will be in English. Afterwards, people joining in can ask questions. The session will start with an introduction and explanation as to how these online interviews will work.

Nir Baram (1976) is one of the most well known writers of Israel. He published four novels and his nonfiction appeared in magazines and newspapers, like The New Yorker and NRC Handelsblad.Nir Baram (1976) is one of the most well known writers of Israel. He published four novels and his nonfiction appeared in magazines and newspapers, like The New Yorker and NRC Handelsblad.

Nir Baram

 Books from Mandel can be purchased via our partner De Vries Van Stockum Den Haag

Six years after the ground-breaking dystopia Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel returns with a kaleidoscopic mystery rich in ineffable magic and good old fashioned storytelling. Deftly weaving together the stories of a bartender, a hotel owner and a shipping agent into a gripping, evocative novel of panoramic sweep and nuanced characterisation, '

Margo Jefferson

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