Facts and Figures

While it is difficult to identify clear trends, the bibliographic data show that Dutch literature in English has seen ups and downs since 2000, with a low of 53 translations in 2006 and a high of 100 in 2015. Translations declined steadily between 2000 and 2006, followed by a period of recovery between 2007 and 2010 and two more years of decline. Between 2013 (57) and 2015 (100), translations to English nearly doubled, followed by two years of slight decline.

It is difficult to explain these fluctuations without detailed qualitative research, taking into account changes in the (translation) publishing industry and the people and institutions behind the coming-into-being and reception of each individual translated book. However, three factors can be singled out to help us understand these figures: an oversaturated and hard-to-enter market, a reliance on government support, and high-impact industry events like the Frankfurt Book Fair. We explore these factors in more detail in another post.

Nooteboom’s journey into English dates back to 1983, with the publication of Rituals, Adrienne Dixon’s translation of his 1980 novel Rituelen. Nooteboom’s English-language debut was a critical success: Rituals was warmly received by critics and won the 1983 Pegasus Prize, a (now-defunct) literary prize to honour works from countries whose literature is rarely translated into English. Today, his books can be found in the lists of some of the Anglophone world’s most prestigious publishers: The New York Review of Books, Picador, Vintage, Harvill Secker, Yale University Press. Nooteboom’s renown has been reinforced through strong receptions in other languages, particularly in German. Commentators point to the 1993 Schwerpunkt, the first time Dutch-language literature was featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair, as a pivotal moment in Nooteboom’s international career and a watershed moment for Dutch literature in the world. For more on the transnational significance of the Frankfurt Book Fair, see this post.

With 17 translations, the second most widely translated author hails from the Dutch literary canon: Louis Couperus (1863-1923). Considered one of the foremost figures of Dutch letters, Couperus boasts a large and diverse oeuvre spanning lyric poetry, historical novels, short stories and writing for children — only a fraction of which has found its way to English. However, nearly a century after his death, Couperus continues to attract the attention of Anglophone bibliophiles. Works originally translated to English in 1918 by the polyglot journalist, critic and translator Alexander Teixeira de Mattos have been reprinted as recently as 2011 and new translations of two of Couperus’ masterworks, Eline Vere (1889, translated to English by Ina Rilke) and De stille kracht (1900, translated to English by Paul Vincent as The Hidden Force) were published in 2010 and 2012, respectively. One can only hope more will follow soon.

The third slot belongs to non-fiction writer Geert Mak (13 translations). Among Mak’s well-known English titles are Amsterdam (orig. 1994, translated to English by Philipp Blom in 2000), The Many Lives of Jan Six (orig. 2016, translated to English by Liz Waters in 2017) and In America: Travels with Steinbeck (orig. 2014, translated to English by Liz Waters in 2015). For In America, Mak retraced John Steinbeck’s coast-to-coast-and-back-again roadtrip with his poodle Charley, using Steinbeck’s experiences to comment and reflect on the state of twenty-first-century America.

An honourable mention goes to the children’s literature duo Dieter and Ingrid Schubert, whose 12 translations place them one shy of the podium. They had international success from the start with their debut children’s book, A Crocodile Under My Bed (1980), and continue that success today. Their picture books are published in the Netherlands by the Rotterdam-based publisher Lemniscaat. To reach readers around the world, Lemniscaat uses coproduction agreements and in-house translation, reflecting an interesting transnational strategy for overcoming the challenges of working transnationally from a small language.

It is difficult to understate the importance of The Diary of a Young Girl in the Anglophone world, and particularly in the US, where it remains on the reading lists of schools around the country, reaching millions of young readers. It is also one of the best-selling books of all time. Writing in The New York Times, Joseph Berger estimates 35 million copies sold.

The most widely translated contemporary Dutch writer in English is Herman Koch, whose Geachte heer M (2014) reached readers in 2016 as Dear Mr. M in an acclaimed translation by Sam Garrett. (See our interview with Sam Garrett discussing his recent translation of Gerard Reve’s De avonden here.) Dear Mr. M appeared in no less than four editions for different Anglophone territories and saw multiple reprints. The hit was preceded in 2013 by Koch’s even more successful English-language debut: The Dinner (orig. 2009, Het diner), also translated by Garrett, which became a New York Times bestseller. It, too, saw multiple English-language editions and reprints and has been adapted into three feature-length films.

While Pushkin has effectively cornered the market on Dutch literature in English, other publishers also occasionally pick up a title or two. In fact, that is a defining characteristic of Dutch-English literary transfer in the twenty-first century: a great number of Anglophone publishers have done a Dutch book at some point (480 publishers by our count) but the vast majority do only one.

Another defining characteristic is the prevalence of publishing houses that work in English but have strong ties with the Low Countries. Often, they are run by Dutch immigrants or their descendants and are dedicated to introducing Dutch literature to readers in their adopted country. This is the case for Eerdmans Publishing (24 Dutch-English translations), a publisher of religious books and YA&C literature based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Gecko Press, a children’s book publisher based in Wellington, New Zealand.

As already mentioned, several publishers headquartered in the Low Countries, including the Hasselt-based children’s book publisher Clavis, the Rotterdam-based publisher Lemniscaat, and the Amsterdam-based literary publisher De Geus (via it’s English-language imprint World Editions) produce in-house English translations of Dutch-language works in their list and distribute them via distribution partners to English-language readers — a clever way to circumnavigate the traditional Anglophone gatekeepers.