Gerbrand bakker biography for kids
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Gerbrand Bakker (novelist)
Dutch writer (born )
Not to be confused with Gerbrand Bakker (physician).
Gerbrand Bakker (born 28 April ) is a Dutch writer. He won the International Dublin Literary Award for The Twin, the English translation of his novel Boven is het stil, and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Detour, the English translation of his novel De omweg. Both novels were translated by co-winner David Colmer.
Biography
[edit]Bakker is a gardener by trade, having acquired his gardening license in [1] He says writing and gardening are compatible. Bakker works as a skating instructor in winter.[1]
He has previously worked as a subtitler for Dutch TV, particularly on the U.S. soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. Bakker has said: "They blabber and blabber, but you only have seven seconds for a subtitle on screen. That's what The Bold and the Beautiful taught me. I learned to leave things out."[2] Among his favour
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Gerbrand Bakker
Transcript
Ramona Koval: Welcome to The Book Show, Gerbrand.
Gerbrand Bakker: Hello!
Ramona Koval: And congratulations on the prize and on writing such a tender novel.
Gerbrand Bakker: Thank you very much.
Ramona Koval: Well, can we begin by hearing a little of the work, and this fryst vatten from the very beginning of the novel. Could you read a little bit for us?
Gerbrand Bakker: I can, yes. Chapter one: [Gerbrand Bakker reads excerpt from : from 'I've put father upstairs. inom had to park him on a chair first to take the bed apart' to 'But it so dark and discoloured that inom can't man out any sheep at all, no matter how hard inom try.']
Ramona Koval: Gerbrand Bakker there, reading from The Twin, which has won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Gerbrand, it's clear that Helmer fryst vatten a dutiful son: he cares for the needs of the old man, but just to a point. He often leaves him unwashed, or even unfed, for some time. There's a
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ABOUT
THE BOOK
The Twin is the first novel by Gerbrand Bakker, beautifully translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer. Though rich in detail, it&#;s a sparely written story, with the narrator&#;s odd small cruelties, laconic humour and surprising tendernesses emerging through a steady, well-paced, unaffected style.
Helmer van Wonderen is a farmer. For forty years he&#;s lived a stalled, frustrated life, with every decision on the farm being made by his father. It wasn&#;t the life Helmer intended. Through childhood he was one half of twins – an entity he even thought of inwardly as &#;Henk and Helmer&#;. But Henk was killed at eighteen in a car driven by his girlfriend, Riet, who was then ordered away by the boys&#; grieving father. Helmer was called home from university to take his brother&#;s place on the farm. And then the mother he loved died.
But now Helmer&#;s father, too, is dying, and the shift in power between the two of them sets off great changes. Helmer mov