by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
WINNER OF THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
A stark and gripping tale of childhood grief from one of the most exciting new voices in Dutch literature
Ten-year-old
Jas lives with her strictly religious parents and her siblings on a
dairy farm where waste and frivolity are akin to sin. Despite the dreary
routine of their days, Jas has a unique way of experiencing her world:
her face soft like cheese under her mother’s hands; the texture of green
warts, like capers, on migrating toads in the village; the sound of
“blush words” that aren’t in the Bible.
One icy morning, the
disciplined rhythm of her family’s life is ruptured by a tragic
accident, and Jas is convinced she is to blame. As her parents’
suffering makes them increasingly distant, Jas and her siblings develop a
curiosity about death that leads them into disturbing rituals and
fantasies. Cocooned in her red winter coat, Jas dreams of “the other
side” and of salvation, not knowing where this dreaming will finally
lead her.
A bestseller in the Netherlands, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s radical debut novel The Discomfort of Evening
offers readers a rare vision of rural and religious life in the
Netherlands. In it, they ask: In the absence of comfort and care, what
can the mind of a child invent to protect itself? And what happens when
that is not enough? With stunning psychological acuity and images of
haunting, violent beauty, Rijneveld has created a captivating world of
language unlike any other.