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BooksRide with a scribe

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with Brit Geoff Dyer in his short story ‘Hotel

Oblivion’, as his narrator (like many of his country-

men before him) finds himself wandering the city while high on magic mushrooms, pushing the boundaries of famously liberal Amsterdam. Simon Schama explores tolerance of a different nature in his Golden Age study ‘The Embarrassment of Riches’, examining the city’s role as safe haven

for Jews fleeing persecution in other parts of Europe.

Other writers recall greater- and lesser-

known uprisings from moments in the city’s past when tolerance has waivered. We relive the famous

Provo movement of the ’60s via an email

(deliciously voyeuris-tic) from Piet Reinewald

to his granddaughter, who is doing a school project on the

city’s revolutionary past. In ‘Amster-dam, A Brief Life of the City’, Geert Mak relates a charming anecdote of an attempt by a famous Amsterdam

‘Have you noticed,’ asks French-Alge-rian existentialist Albert Camus in his 1956 novel ‘The Fall’, ‘that Amster-dam’s concentric canals resemble the circles of hell?’

Although not, perhaps, a quote for the city’s official marketing literature, it’s difficult to deny the topographical accuracy, given that Amsterdam radiates outwards in concentric circles from its oldest, and most infamous, neighbourhood: the Red Light District. Camus paints a pretty graphic picture. When you put his words with extracts from other writers who’ve found solace in, or taken inspiration from, Amsterdam across the centu-ries, that picture becomes both vividly compelling and bemusingly con-tradictory. Not unlike the city itself.

It’s a simple idea, present-ing a metropolis in all its multifaceted glory through the words of great writ-ers, and one so good it’s astonishing it hasn’t been done before. Heather Reyes and Malcolm Burgess, the founders of Oxygen Books’ ‘City-Pick’ series, certainly had a ‘eureka’ moment when they launched the first edition (Paris) back in early 2009. ‘City-Pick Amsterdam’ is published this month.

Split into loosely thematic sections, one of the nicest features of this collection is that the 70-plus contributors – novelists, journalists, travel writers – span the centuries. Past and present sit side by side, just as rock star Dave Matthews once busked for small change a few feet from the 17th-century house of one of Amsterdam’s most famous adopted sons, René Descartes.

And so we spend a wild weekend

Tell me a bit about what inspired ‘Amsterdam: Made By Hand’.As a stylist and interior designer, I’m known for choosing products that are made by hand, but this book is also about discovering the city in a new light. When I wrote it, the best feeling for me was discovery. Wander-ing down little streets finding new artisans gave me such a rush of excite-ment and I really want to pass that feeling on to other people. The book is a way of opening people’s eyes to look around and find their own unique places in the city. The book is divided into ten ‘wan-ders’ throughout different areas of the city. Did you literally find the shops on daily walks?Yes and no. I had to put some of them together afterwards. Once I had put them into ‘wanders’, I had to make sure they actually worked, so I did them with a friend and was quite nervous that nothing would be open or that it might take too long. But it was a great success, and we ended up discovering lots of little extra things along the way.You also suggest some of your

Charles de Montesquieu, David Sedaris and Cees Nooteboom walk into a bruin café. It’s not the start of a bad bibliophile joke, but the portrait painted by a new breed of city guide, writes Megan Roberts

In her new book, ‘Amster-dam: Made By Hand’, Aus-tralian stylist, photographer and Amsterdam resident Pia Jane Bijkerk divulges a series of hidden bou-tiques and ateliers across the city, Arun Sood writes

resident to curb some of the city’s excesses after a Calvinist revival:

‘In December 1663, Tulp [the surgeon of Rem-brandt’s 1632 painting “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp”] and his camp … prohibited the selling of the tra-ditional Saint Nicholas gingerbread figures as “idolatry” and “papist perversion”. The result was a small children’s riot, and the ban was hastily lifted.’ Rightly so.

Other chapters explore the city’s relationship with water (with extracts from Chris Ewan, Cees Nooteboom); the concept of the ‘Amsterdam-

nation’ (Multatuli, Dubravka Ugresic); the occupied city

(Anne Frank – of course); Ian McEwan evokes the

perfect Amsterdam moment; Doeschka Meijsing takes a swim in a canal.

There’s a thought-ful selection of Dutch

writers, including not only literary heavy-

weights like Mak, who are widely known in translation,

but also lesser-known authors – Meijsing, Stefan Hertmans, Jan Donk-ers – some of whom are translated into English here for the first time. It makes for some delightful discoveries – even for those of us who think we know this city well.‘City-Pick Amsterdam’ is published by Oxygen Books at €17.99.

Ian McEwan evokes the perfect Amster-dam moment; Doeschka Meijsing takes a swim in a canal

favourite places to eat in the city.Other guidebooks just list places but I’m more of a visual person. I didn’t want to list a selection of artisans that people must visit. I’d rather read-ers visualise each ‘wander’ and be inspired to go out and explore. To add in what I ate at a pancake place in be-tween shopping is a very visual thing and I think people respond to that.Can you empathise with those who find it intimidating to venture into smaller boutiques where it’s hard not to make your presence known?Yes, I want people to feel like they’re ‘meeting’ artisans through me so they’re more comfortable to go inside the shops themselves. Artisans love customers and are very passionate about what they do, so when you actu-ally go in and ask them questions they aren’t bothered at all.In an age of mass-market design, it seems increasingly difficult for boutique owners and craftspeople to sustain a living.Yeah. These places are dying off and it’s upsetting because they’re essentially what make the city what it is. Whether it be a seamstress, tailor or cobbler, artisans give a place its character. Big companies and mass-produced goods result in cities losing their identity. When everything starts looking the same, there’s no culture left – and culture is what people come to Amsterdam for. ‘Amsterdam: Made By Hand’ is published by Little Bookroom at €21.99. Meet Pia Jane Bijkerk at the official book launch, Sat 5 June, at the American Book Center. See listings for details.

June 2010 www.timeoutamsterdam.nl 61 60 www.timeoutamsterdam.nl June 2010

Top picks of city lit: insets clockwise from left: Albert Camus; Doeschka Meijsing; René Descartes

62 www.timeoutamsterdam.nl June 2010

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EventsHow to use the listings

Means the event is recommended.FREE All events that are free.

How to be listedPlease send all listings to listings@timeoutamsterdam.nl by 13.00 on the 8th of the month prior to publi-cation. Information must include any admission charge, times, dates and a telephone number that we can pub-lish. Listings are free but, as space is limited, inclusion is not guaranteed.

Tuesday 1The Power of Plots Melkweg, Lijn-

baansgracht 161 (maandvanhetspannende boek.nl). 19.45, €7.50 + membership. June is the annual ‘Month of the Thriller Book’ in Holland. It launches tonight with the Power of Plots party, this year featuring the crème de la crème of Scandinavia’s thriller writers. See Bookends, below.

Thursday 3The John Adams Institute Presents:

Kathryn Stockett Aula, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Singel 411 (624 7280/john- adams.nl). 20.00; €18.50. The American debut novelist talks about the runaway suc-cess of ‘The Help’, tackling racial segregation in the South in the early ’60s.

Saturday 5FREE Amsterdam: Made By Hand

ABC, Spui 12 (625 5537/abc.nl). 15.00. The official book launch of Pia Jane Bijkerk’s new book, ‘Amsterdam: Made by Hand’. See interview, page 61.

Sunday 6FREE Book Trivial Pursuit The

English Bookshop, Lauriergracht 71 (english bookshop.nl). 18.00-20.00. Please reserve: information@englishbookshop.nl. The Eng-lish Bookshop and BritSoc bring you this bookish take on the original board game.

FREE Versal Presents: John Hen-nessy & Locals The English Bookshop, Lauriergracht 71 (englishbookshop.nl). 15.30. An afternoon of poetry and story from visit-ing US poet John Hennessy plus local writers.

Tuesday 8The John Adams Institute

Presents: David Remnick De Rode Hoed, Keizersgracht 102 (624 7280/john-

adams.nl). 20.00; €18.50. David Remnick, editor of the legendary New Yorker maga-zine, is here to present his new book, ‘The Bridge’, a biography of Barack Obama.

Sunday 13FREE Full Metal Poem Launch De

Nieuwe Anita, Frederik Hendrikstraat 115 (fullmetalpoem.com). 20.00. The irreverent new Amsterdam- and Hamburg-based poetry magazine has its official launch tonight, complete with blue-grass band.

Masterclass: Poetry & Voice The English Bookshop, Lauriergracht 71 (english bookshop.nl). 13.00-17.00. See website for details and to register. Poetry workshop with visiting writer Julian Stannard (UK) explor-ing the poetic voice.

Friday 18FREE WordPlay ABC Treehouse, Voet-

boogstraat 11 (treehouse.abc.nl). 20.00-22.00; €5, free to performers. Monthly performance event for the English-speaking community. From poets to comedians, seasoned pros to newbies, you’ll find them all here.

Saturday 19 FREE Richard Tulloch The English

Bookshop, Lauriergracht 71 (englishbook shop.nl). 18.00. Please reserve: information@englishbookshop.nl. Popular Australian teen-fiction writer (and creator of the astonish-ingly successful and bonkers ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’ TV series) Richard Tulloch swings by the English Bookshop.

Saturday 26FREE ABC Urban Arts Festival

Illustrated Book Panel Spui (abc.nl). 14.00-15.00. Reserve at: lightstone45@zon net.nl. A panel of authors, artists, designers, editors and sales people talk about publishing illustrated books. Part of ABC’s Urban Arts Festival, see Feature, page 23.

Monday 28FREE The International Institute for

Asian Studies Presents: Nine Lives, In Search of the Sacred in Modern India Lutheran Church/UvA-Aula, Spui 411. 20.00-22.00. Reserve at: michiel.baas@uva.nl. A multidsiciplinary evening of theatre, readings, music and traditional dance featuring a lecture from author and historian William Dalrymple on the subject of his new book, ‘Nine Lives, In Search of the Sacred in Modern India’. Dalrymple will examine the contemporary role of India’s sacred tradi-tions, and tonight sees the official launch of the book. With music from Paban Das Baul & the Bauls of Bengal and Susheela Raman.

Penguin Classics €19.99

An anthology, we are told in Paulo Coelho’s preface to this selection of extracts from classic literature, should be ‘a reminder of other books that, in their turn, are reminders of an oral, living message’.

Presumably, he means that a collec-tion of great works, when thoughtfully combined, should achieve a kind of Pla-tonic transcendence into the realms of shared human memory. And as the old axiom goes, the total should be greater than the sum of its parts.

It is no doubt worth mention-ing, right up front, that Coelho’s selections come entirely from the publisher’s back catalogue of ‘Penguin Classics’. This could be for copyright reasons, although the cynic in me suspects it’s prob-ably a marketing strategy to sell backlist titles.

Whichever is the case, the contents page of ‘Inspira-tions’ reads like the carefully constructed bookshelf of a first-year literature student: from Hans Christian Andersen’s fables through classics by Jorge Louis Borges and Mary Shelley to religious texts and smatterings from the non-Western canon – Kahlil Gibran? Check. Rabindranath Tagore? Check – all are present and correct.

The extracts are taken from defining works, but how has Coelho organised them to remind us of that ‘oral, living message’? By rejecting chronological sequence in favour of thematic sections, each named for one of the four classical elements – water, earth, air and fire.

‘Earth’, for example, is not, for Coelho, simply the ground upon which we

Stieg Larsson may have been dead for six years, but it hasn’t stopped him becoming Swe-den’s most famous contemporary export. His posthumously published Millennium Trilogy has sold 27 million copies, and he’s just the tip of the Nordic novelist iceberg. Populist but never pulpy, featuring the bleakest of plot lines and the most angst-ridden of characters, Scandinavian crime fiction is on the up and up.

June is the official Month of the Thriller Book in the Netherlands, and tip-ping their hats to the current vogue, the organisers promise us a Scandinavian special, with the crème de la crème of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish crime-

Inspirations Edited by Paulo Coelho

Review

stand, but represents death, decay, win-ter, stagnation; the roots of things; the womb, the mother. It includes extracts from Oscar Wilde’s ‘De Profundis’; Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ and Hannah Arendt’s ‘Eichmann and the Holocaust’.

It’s an uncommon approach, and when read with Coelho’s introductions, the extracts – mere snapshots of prose, most of them – do seem to acquire greater meaning, building one upon another to create, if not quite a Platonic ideal, at least a portrait of the writer, his influences, inspirations and writing practices. But therein lies the rub: Coelho’s anthology says infinitely more

about him than about any of the works he references – or any ‘oral, living message’.

His seminal work, alle-gorical fable ‘The Alchemist’, has sold 65 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books in history. And for his many fans this anthology is an insight not so much into how the author connects the literary dots, but how he reads and thinks.

For those of us who view him less as a kind of spiritual prophet and more as a self-help writer with no extraordinary talent, it is disappointing.

In the end, it is Coelho’s own words within this volume that both fans and critics will focus on – ‘anthology’, after all, comes from the Greek for a bouquet of flowers; a gift, an offering. Unfortu-nately, for me, Coelho’s own works will never join the ranks of those from which he draws inspiration, and all those pages wasted on pseudo-philosophy would have been better filled with more selections from truly great litera-ture. Megan Roberts

Bookends Scandinavian thrillerswriters in town. Here’s our pick of the

books they’ll be promoting.The Vault by Roslund-Hell-

ström (Abacus, 2008) is a great example of the Swedish writing duo’s tendency toward social commentary within the thriller genre. This twisty police procedural of passionate reprisal with interweaving storylines ends in a dramatic climax and a moral dilemma for

a junior officer exposed to his boss’s corruption. Look out for their forth-coming ‘Three Seconds’, due out in English in September this year.

The Snowman (Harvill Secker, 2010) by multi award-winning Norwegian Jo Nesbø, is the fifth instal-

ment in the Harry Hole series. A brilliantly fast-paced thriller about a serial killer intent on driving Hole to the limits of his sanity and beyond, it’s easy to see why Norwegian readers have voted Nesbø’s works as

some of the best Norwegian crime fiction of all time.

Mikkel Birkegaard’s The Library of Shadows (Black Swan, 2009) combines classic Scandinavian thriller elements with a fantasy-tinged plot and was a runaway success in his native Denmark. A seem-ingly harmless second-hand bookshop is home to a shadowy society connected

across space and time by their love of books, and capable of harnessing

the immense and haunt-ing power of the ancient Library of Alexandria. It’s an acquired taste for thriller purists, but bibliophiles will love its acknowledgment that every book has a soul.

In Leif Davidson’s The Woman from Bratislava (Arcadia Books, 2009), Danish, middle-aged university lecturer Teddy Pedersen receives a visit from a woman claiming to be his half-sister – the titular woman from Bratislava. When this mysterious woman reveals that Teddy’s SS officer father, declared dead in 1952, in fact lived on for many years in Yugoslavia, the conse-quences – both personal and political – prove immense and far-reaching.See maandvanhetspannendeboek.nl. Megan Roberts