Afterlight
by Jaap Robben
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Pub Date 7 May 2024 | Archive Date 30 Apr 2024
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Description
"With its tight sentences and a fast pace, Afterlight moves like detective fiction. It’s a poignant novel in which a single, pregnant woman is mistreated in her conservative society; she remains resilient and determined to honor her baby’s memory." —Foreword Reviews
The young free-spirited florist Frieda grew up in a strictly Catholic environment in the 1960s. When she steps onto a frozen river on a late winter afternoon, little does she know that everything is about to change for her. On the ice she meets the married Otto. They experience a love that begins stormy and ends fatefully: Frieda becomes pregnant - a scandal in the world in which she moves. And so she must never be the mother of her secret child. For decades she kept her memories of this episode in her life to herself. But the grief for the lost child remains, despite the later marriage, despite the son she still has. At the age of eighty-one, Frieda is suddenly alone again. The silent sorrow returns with force. Only then does she dare to face her story – and to share it. With Afterlight, inspired by true events, Robben not only pulls back the veil on Frieda’s story, but also shines a light on the experiences of countless women between the 1950s and 1980s. The result is an impressive story about buried female trauma, caused by society, organized religion and the dominant social mores.
Advance Praise
“Jaap Robben steers well clear of sentimentality in this delicately wrought book about loss (…) and once again shows himself to be a master of short, restrained sentences.” —Trouw
"Tender and sensitive. Masterful how Jaap Robben describes Frieda's life." —NPO Radio 4 Book of the Week
“Robben knows how to arouse emotion with his stories about outcasts.” —The Standard
"Robben once again shows himself to be a master of short, restrained sentences that keep sentimentality at bay. Afterlight is an impressive and delicate book about loss." —Fidelity
“In Afterlight, Robben tells the difficult story of many women about a time that is not that far behind us. It produces a beautiful novel that offers compassion.” —Dagblad van het Noorden
“There is not a sentence that does not shine or is charged in Jaap Robben's astonishing novel about lifelong suffering. Once you have read the impressive Afterlight, it is impossible to forget the story.” —Het Parool
Praise for Summer Brother, Longlisted for the International Booker Prize
“A deeply humane novel centered on a disabled man, his heroic younger brother and an unreliable, partly criminal father living on an all but derelict site. The book is generous to all its flawed characters, is beautifully written, and humanizes lives of abject poverty on the edge of squalor and disaster.” ―INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE, jury report
“Dutch author Jaap Robben’s second novel shows us the shedding of innocence. Summer Brother, translated by David Doherty, shakes out over a hot summer, during that potent lull when characters so splendidly boil, burst and bloom…Summer Brother grapples with the consequences of carelessness and the abuse of power and trust, even if the violation is unintentional…Robben is wonderful at drawing characters with just a few deliberate strokes…Like a photographer shooting a portrait, Robben captures his subjects in Summer Brother in a focused close-up.” —New York Times
“I just ADORED the novel Summer Brother. Bravo, bravo is what I have to say. It kind of saved me in a way.” ―Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
“It’s an impressive novel: a deceptively simple story of lives at the margin, with a child’s viewpoint perfectly pitched and sustained, it is cleanly written and powerfully imagined. Robben deals with all kinds of inflammable material, and does it with such tact and understanding.” —Hilary Mantel, bestselling author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
“The central premise of Summer Brother, Jaap Robben’s evocative coming-of-age novel, longlisted for the International Booker prize, is that love can thrive in the unlikeliest of places…It is easy to forget this is a work in translation, so deft is David Doherty’s rendition. Robben depicts the limitations of a dysfunctional family but also celebrates empathy as a force for good.” ―The Observer
Marketing Plan
- Publicity outreach to women’s and parenting media outlets
- By the author of International Man Booker longlistee Summer Brother
- Advance galleys and digital reader copies
- Digital assets including author & translator video
- Signed book plates available
- National TV, radio, print, and online review campaign
- Consumer-facing national advertising campaign on Shelf Awareness, Lithub, NPR, Foreword Reviews, Goodreads
- Virtual or in-person author events
- Book club discussion guide
- Bookstore co-op available
- Excerpt placement
- Social-media campaign & Goodreads giveaway
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781642861471 |
| PRICE | US$19.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 360 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Jenni M, Reviewer
GOD that was heartbreaking. incredibly beautiful book; was very attached to all the characters by the end, especially elfie of course. quite a heavy read but worth it; it’s going to stick with me for a while. took me some time to get properly into it, but once i got into it it was basically all i could think about.
Chloe M, Reviewer
A powerful read; would recommend if you like books that deliver realistic characters. Very much enjoyed the writing style of this piece: slow enough that you don’t feel like there’s sections of the book that you could do without. Every choice and decision feels intentional.
Marieke d, Reviewer
Actual rating 3.5 stars.
I needed to like this book so much. I wanted to promote it because it was originally written in Dutch (my mother tongue) and translated into English, and the blurb sounded so intriguing. An 81-year-old woman who just lost her husband and thinks back to that winter of 1963 when she fell in love for the first time. With a married man. And becomes pregnant.
I’ve seen so many images of that winter, one of the coldest ever. The Big Freeze, a year in which the Eleven Cities Tour was skated. Two hundred kilometers through wind and freezing cold, over canals and rivers, along bridges, and on again over the river. This tour was called the hell of 63. This was all I thought about when I started reading the book.
So, I was convinced I would love Frieda's memories. That particular winter, the love story, the pain. But in fact, I liked the present time far more. At 81, Frieda is in need of care and after the death of her husband, she can no longer live alone. So, she moves to a nursing home. Then she starts thinking of her first love and the baby she carried, which no one knows about.
This story shows us so clearly how hard life can be when it's almost over—being washed by so many different people who suddenly see your naked body only a few other people have ever seen. People who fuss and make decisions for you. Shame because of the things you don't remember or can't keep up with. But also the beautiful conversations between a twenty-something nurse who lost his mom and those recognizable cringy conversations with her son Tobias, who is constantly running for his mother but whose actions never seem enough. Because loneliness hits hard.
I really loved the present time but connected less to Frieda's past, even though I felt her pain. And I understand the importance of her story because secrets back then were shoved into a dark corner where no one would ever find them.
But about that hellish winter, I wanted to read about … That was only one chapter of the book.
So now I’m in doubt. Because when I was halfway through the story, I longed to read more. And I shed a tear (or two). But I also skim-read some parts. For now, I am rounding my rating down. I might change my mind, though.
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