Starry

May 17th: that will be the worldwide English publication date for The days of bluegrass love, the English translation by Emma Rault of my young adult novel De dagen van de bluegrassliefde. My American publisher in the United States made a beautiful new cover design, which we will use for the upcoming Dutch print run as well. 

I'm incredibly proud to have this book in English after 23 (!) years. De dagen van de bluegrassliefde was first published in 1999, and became a bit of a classic. The book is still in print. It's about the love story between Tycho from Holland and Oliver from Norway. In 2006 Ons derde lichaam ('Our third body') was published, which talks about Tycho in the year after his bluegrass love year, and in 2015 there was Oliver, the novel about Oliver in Norway two years prior to Bluegrass. Both these books will come out in a new cover design in The Netherlands this summer.

So - we still have to wait til the month of May. But last week the famous review site Kirkus Reviews already published its judgement. Read here what it said, but... we got a starred review! And this: 'Van de Vendel's writing is poetic, intensely emotional, and sensitively philosophical in this beautiful translation by Rault.' Wow!

GERMAN BLUEGRASS ON STAGE

All authors google themselves, everyone knows thát! So did I, this morning, and I found out that there have been some amateur stagings of a play after my book THE DAYS OF BLUEGRASSLOVE. In Germany, in the city of Pfaffenhofen.
The play was an adaptation by Sven. J. Ohlsson, the German edition of my book was published by Carlsen, translated by the great translator Rolf Erdorf.
I hope the audience enjoyed these nights!
More here.