• Based on the true story of Leonoor van Beuzekom, the leader of a small cult, who manipulated her sister Jeannette into starving herself to death in 2017
• https://www.contactmuziek.nl/
• https://www.facebook.com/LeonoorvanBeuzekom/
• Van Beuzekom says, among other things, on Facebook: ¿Last Thursday my sister Jeannette passed on to another world, passed away peacefully. Unfortunately all hell broke loose after that and from one moment to the next we were evicted from our house and taken to a cell, suspected of negligence.¿
• https://leonoor-deelt.blogspot.com/2016/05/hoe-gaat-het-met-je-zus-jeannette_16.html
• One apartment, three women, one man. One of the women is dead. When the emergency personnel arrive, they realize: Elisabeth starved to death, in front of her roommates. All of them believed that not eating and living on light alone was giving their live meaning. What felt right, to them, is impossible to believe from the outside. The remaining members of the idealistic group become suspects in a criminal case.
• Each of the 25 chapters opens with the words ¿We are ¿,¿ and the story of the death is told by a different narrator: from Elisabeth¿s parents and siblings, the neighbors and her sister¿s lawyer, to the night, the daily bread, the scent of an orange, dementia, doubt, and Elisabeth¿s own body. Each narrator has a unique and distinct voice and makes an essential contribution to the novel¿s complex tapestry.
• The reader is taken by surprise by the changing perspectives, and led through successive emotions of concern, outrage, and resignation
• Gerda Blees is a Dutch author and poet
• We Are Light, her debut novel, won the EU Literature Prize as well as the prestigious Dutch Booksellers Award in 2021. It was also shortlisted for the Libris Literature Award.
• Blees calls into question the judgments we pass on idealistic people such as the novel¿s protagonists, and she allows us to empathize with people we initially thought we¿d never be able to relate to
• Michele Hutchison¿s translation of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld¿s novel The Discomfort of Evening was awarded the International Booker Prize. She also co-authored the successful parenting book, The Happiest Kids in the World.
• Translation Deals:
• German (Zsolnay/Hanser)
• Italian (Iperborea)
• Croatian (Hena Com)
• Serbian (Treci Trg)
• Slovene (Založba Goga)
• Bulgarian (Perseus)
• Spanish (Editorial Seperis)