An intimate, often humorous exploration of the intertwining cycles of death, rebirth and coincidence through the eyes of an existential artist.
An amazing game of mirrors. […] Original and promising.
—Le Monde
2014 Anton Wachter Prize for Best First Novel; Golden Book Owl Reader's Choice Award; Opzij Feminist Literature Prize; 2014 Lucy B. & C.W. van der Hoogt Prize; Nominated for the John Leonard Prize, National Book Critics Circle
Meet Minnie Panis, a young and talented conceptual artist navigating love affairs, her unexpected success in the art world, and her relationship with an emotionally distant mother. After surviving a near-death experience falling through the ice during her ultimate artwork, Minnie begins to uncover the truth behind her premature birth with the help of the doctor who saves her life―as it turns out―twice. Entering into his clinic, whose motto is All the fish needs is to get lost in the water, Minnie arrives at the border of life’s ebb, where meaningful art and revelations occur.
Niña Weijers’ remarkable, inventive novel depicts a contemporary conceptual artist at the height of her fame, whose blasé art project has unintended consequences. Weijers invokes Kurt Vonnegut in the course of the narrative, and this novel shares Vonnegut’s sense of how things can be simultaneously real and absurd. Movies and books notoriously fail to capture the social and spiritual atmosphere of the contemporary art world, but Weijers nails it. Her book is beautifully written, surprising and often profound.
—Chris Kraus
Niña Weijers studied literary theory in Amsterdam and Dublin. She has published short stories, essays and articles in various literary magazines, such as Das Magazin, De Gids and De Revisor. In 2010 she won the writing competition Write Now!. She's a regular contributor to the weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, and an editor of De Gids. Her debut novel De consequenties (The Consequences) was published in May 2014. It won the Anton Wachter Prize 2014 for best first novel, the Opzij Feminist Literature Prize, the 2014 Lucy B. & C.W. van der Hoogt Prize, and was shortlisted for the Libris Prize and the Golden Book Owl, the two most important Dutch and Flemish literary awards, the latter of which awarded her with the Reader's Choice Award.
Hester Velmans was born in the Netherlands, educated in Switzerland and England, and today lives in western Massachusetts. She is a translator specializing in contemporary Dutch and French literature. Her translation of Renate Dorrestein’s A Heart of Stone won the 2001 Vondel Prize; in 2014 she was awarded a U.S. National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship to translate the neglected novelist Herman Franke. She is the author of the popular children’s books Isabel of the Whales and Jessaloup’s Song. Her new novel, Slipper (Perrault's Mistress) is forthcoming.
