In this novel by a writer from the Netherlands, Phinus and Franka Vermeer find their family life perfect until their young son is murdered. Their ways of coping with the horror of the event are markedly different, and threaten to drive them apart. For more options...

Detectives Grijpstra and de Gier uncover evidence of sorcery as they investigate the murder of a high-class prostitute who lived in a canal houseboat.. For more options...

Marcel is a sympathetic, sometimes hilarious exploration of family secrets, and of the burden of guilt borne by so many in post-war Europe. The narrator is a ten-year-old boy who lives with his grandparents in a Flemish village. For more options...

A crash of a novel - a crackingly entertaining story about two boys, one wheelchair, and a friendship that propels them headfirst into maturity. A word-of-mouth bestseller in Europe, with translation rights sold in twelve languages and film rights already snapped up. For more options...

A volume in the long-running and immensely popular "Amsterdam Cops" series, this book focuses on two police detectives' investigations of the seamy side of Amsterdam. The author, a former Zen monk and policeman now living in Maine, pours much of himself and his experience into his protagonists. For more options...

Wim and Marie, an ordinary Dutch couple, have been hiding Nico, a Jewish man, for many months during the Occupation, and seemingly without suspicion - but when Nico becomes ill and dies, they must find a way to dispose of the corpse. Their attempts take on almost farcical proportions, yet with a backdrop of one of the worst periods of world history, any notion of comedy must surely give way to a black ineluctable tragedy. . For more options...

On a holy mountain in the depths of Persia, there is a cave with a mysterious cuneiform carving deep inside it. Aga Akbar, a deaf-mute boy from the mountain, develops his own private script from these symbols and writes passionately of his life, his family and his efforts to make sense of the changes the twentieth century brings to his country. For more options...

Rudolf leaves his comfortable origins in Delft by ship for Java to help run the family's estates there. He moves from plantation to plantation, attempting to understand the ways of the local peoples, their version of Islam and their relationship to their land. For more options...

Beyond Sleep (Nooit Meer Slapen) has been Hermans's most popular book in Holland, which may explain Harvill's decision to publish it first, ahead of greater achievements such as The Darkroom of Damocles (a fresh translation of which is queued for publication in 2007) and Het Behouden Huis (not on the agenda). Those two books, suffused by Hermans's experiences in the second world war, are as disturbing and powerful as anything by Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut. For more options...

Welcome to the house of the mosque...Iran, 1950. Spring has arrived, and as the women prepare the festivities, Sadiq waits for a suitor to knock on the door. For more options...

"In Lost Paradise, his most ambitious book yet, Cees Nooteboom sets out to connect two seemingly unrelated strangers whom he has glimpsed on his travels - a beautiful woman aboard a Berlin-bound flight and a haggard-looking man on a Holland train platform - and to explore the major impact that small interactions can have on the course of our journeys." "The beautiful woman becomes Alma, a young woman of German descent, who leaves her parents' Sao Paolo home on a hot summer night in a fit of depression. Her engine dies in one of the city's most dangerous favelas, a mob surrounds her, and she is pulled from the car. For more options...

During the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt is visited by Dorbeck. Dorbeck is Osewoudt's spitting image in reverse. For more options...

On his way back to Amsterdam from New Zealand Jacques Bekker's plane is delayed, giving him four unexpected hours in Sydney. On a whim he decides to look up an old girlfriend - his first love. For more options...

'Fermat's Last Theorem' meets the Coen Brothers in a story about maths that borders the lands of insanity and divine inspiration. . For more options...

An autobiographical novel about a boy raised in a Rotterdam slum by a mother too independent to marry his father. The boy eventually joins a law firm and rises in his profession despite his father's efforts to hold him back. For more options...

A brilliantly paced psychological thriller, 'The Reunion' is a chilling story of just how difficult it can be to cope when the past comes back to haunt you...Sabine is twenty-four years old and has just returned to work following a nervous breakdown. Unsurprisingly, life in the office has changed since she left, and Sabine is now the brunt of her colleagues' cruel jokes, as well as the main topic of office gossip. For more options...