Joost Zwagerman (Amsterdam)
The artist
Joost Zwagerman is a prominent figure in the Dutch literary landscape and beyond. He has been a fixture since his highly successful second novel Gimmick! (1989) which offered a portrait of the bohemian youth and art scene in Amsterdam during the 1980s. Not only is he one of the most widely read authors of his generation, he is also a prominent and acclaimed art critic, expert on pop music and a television personality. He writes fiction, poetry, essays, columns and political pamphlets.
In 2010 Zwagerman was invited to write the prestigious Book Week Gift. This short commissioned novel is the highlight of the yearly Book Promotion Week: a free copy is handed out to anybody who buys a book during that week. In Duel, the story of an art critic who chases his stolen painting across Europe, Zwagerman combines his love and knowledge of art with the precise observations of the novelist. This text played a pivotal role in Zwagerman's visit to Sheffield which took place from 15 till 26 November 2010.
Citybook
Joost Zwagerman contributed extensively to the Germanic Studies Dutch programme. He offered seminars on Dutch literature and contemporary society for students of Dutch at all levels. He also gave a public reading on 25 November 2010.
His most extensive teaching project involved the so-called Virtual Dutch Translation Project which involved students from Sheffield, Cambridge, Nottingham and University College London. Using an electronic communication environment, the students collaborated in small groups to translate the opening chapter of Duel into English. Zwagerman was at hand to comment and elaborate on his text and he was central to the two plenary video conferences. Jonathan Reeder, a literary translator who has translated some of Zwagerman's work, played the role of online translation coach and consultant and attended the closing video conference in London. The full text of the collaborative translation will appear in the academic journal Dutch Crossing .
Zwagerman's writer in residency was a collaboration between deBuren Dutch-Flemish House of Culture and the Dutch Foundation for Literature. As part of the residency, Zwagerman visited Cambridge and Nottingham and spent a further two weeks at UCL.