- Our Stores
- University Avenue
- About
- The Move
- The Co-op Turns 50!
- Sale Books
- View all sale books
- Or browse by section:
- American History
- African History
- African-American History
- Anthologies
- Anthropology
- Art and Art History
- Cartography
- Chicago
- Cognitive Science
- Drama
- East Asian History
- Economics
- European History
- Foreign Language Reference and Instruction
- Graphica
- Humor
- Judaica
- Literary Criticism
- Literature
- Mathematics
- Native American Studies
- Poetry
- Psychology
- Science
- Sociology
- South Asian History
- Theology
- Travel
- Miscellaneous
- Coursebook Ordering
- U of C Coursebook Listings
- 57th Street Books
- The Newberry Library Bookstore
- Hours and Contact Information
- Maps and Directions
- University Avenue
- Co-op Membership
- Coursebooks
- Events
- The Front Table Blog
- New Titles
- Your Account
The Twin (Hardcover)
$25.00
Special Order - Subject to Availability
Description
Named a “Best Adult Book for High School Students 2009” by School Library Journal!
"Gerbrand Bakker's writing is fabulously clear, so clear that each sentence leaves a rippling wake."—Los Angeles Times
“A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humour.”—J.M. Coetzee
“Human dramas are offset by landscape and animals feelingly delineated, and David Colmer's translation is distinguished by an exceptional (and crucial) ear for dialogue.”—Paul Binding, The Independent
"Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end."—Tim Parks
When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return from university life to take over his brother’s role on the small family farm, resigning himself to spending the rest of his days with his head under a cow.
Thirty years later, Helmer moves his invalid father upstairs to have him out of the way. Soon after, Riet, once engaged to marry Helmer’s twin, appears and asks if she and her troubled eighteen-year-old son could come to live with them on the farm.
Ostensibly a novel about the canals, the green fields, and the unrelenting flatness of the Dutch countryside, The Twin ultimately opens itself to the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one’s own hands. It chronicles a way of life that has resisted modernity and is culturally apart, yet is riven with longing.
Gerbrand Bakker studied Dutch literature and worked subtitling nature films before becoming a gardener. The Twin, his first novel, appeared in Dutch in 2006 and was awarded the Golden Dog-Ear Prize for the best-selling literary debut in the Netherlands.
David Colmer is a writer and translator. He is a two-time winner of the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize.
About the Author
Gerbrand Bakker (b. 1962) studied Dutch language and literature and worked as a subtitler for nature films before becoming a gardener. [The Twin], his first adult novel, appeared in Dutch in 2006 and was awarded the Golden Dog-Ear, a prize for the best-selling literary debut.
Praise for The Twin…
"After finishing 'The Twin,' all the reader can say is: here is a true writer."
—Het Parool
"The charm of Bakker’s book is how finely every element is balanced, how perfectly the story is paced. … Bakker shows a fine gift for laconic comedy. … The great pleasure of this novel is how it has just enough plot to allow us to relish its beautifully turned observations of birds and beasts, weather and water."
—Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books
"Tense with unuttered yearning … The greatness of this book lies … in a mounting intricacy of feeling as life begins to burgeon out of a stony, wasted existence. … But instead of something terrible happening … rillets of sweetness and joy arise, little springs of gladness. … In the end … this becomes a kindhearted book, kind to both characters and reader."
—Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe
“The novel has all the careful observation and and delicate shading of a painting by one of the Dutch masters - Bakker sees beauty and complexity in the smallest corners of everyday life and portrays them with a quiet mastery that gives his story both great weight and great lightness."
—The Quarterly Conversation
"Stealthy seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end."
—Tim Parks
"This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour […] It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland."
—Times Literary Supplement
"Bakker is above all a gifted stylist. His dialogue is exemplary, and the descriptions of nature have a natural charm worthy of Nescio. It is a long time since we’ve taken such pleasure in a genuinely Dutch novel."
—Truow
"This is a novel of great brilliance and subtlety. It contains scenes of enveloping psychological force but is open-ended, its extraordinary last section suggesting that fulfilment of long-standing aspirations can arrive, unanticipated, in late middle-age. Human dramas are offset by landscape and animals feelingly delineated, and David Colmer's translation is distinguished by an exceptional (and crucial) ear for dialogue."
—Paul Binding
"Bakker has a gift for investing daily rituals and landscape with the universal questions around identity and self worth. Helmer’s transformation affirms that it is never too late to take responsibility for one’s destiny. This is a beautifully written book - its lustre lies in the clear simplicity of language as well as the authenticity of Helmer’s internal dialogue."
—Ruth Wildgust, The Sunday Business Post (Ireland)
"Bakker captures the feel of life in the Dutch countryside in a style which is both dazzling and subdued. … a poignant story, recounted in a tone at once spare and loving."
—De Volkskrant
