The Detour

Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, this is the new novel, set in the UK, from the author of the IMPAC Dublin prize-winning bestseller The Twin

The Detour is a beautiful, oddly moving work of fiction, a quiet read that lingers long in the mind, like the ghosts that linger in our homes, and in the land around us

This is a novel full of hints and mysteries… [It] will almost certainly keep you routed to your chair until the denouement.

Tranquility and tension create a quiet triumph

This intriguing novel, translated with quiet passion by David Colmer, captures how it feels to have ‘no idea what to do next, how to move backward or forward

Deliberately side-stepping any trite resolutions, The Detour, is a haunting and quietly thoughtful work, written with a restraint and lack of sentimentality that matches the somewhat bleak landscape

The story is deeply involving, the dialogue utterly convincing, and the translation near-perfect. Unpretentious, restrained and profound, The Detour is everything a novel should be

Gerbrand Bakker worked as a subtitler for nature films before becoming a gardener. His debut novel The Twin won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and will soon be made into a film. The Detour won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

WINNER OF THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN PRIZE 
 
'A wonderful novel. Wise and generous to a fault of all our human failings and frailties' Lloyd Jones, author of Mister Pip 
 
A Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales. She says her name is Emilie. She has left her husband, having confessed to an affair. 
 
In Amsterdam, her stunned husband forms a strange partnership with a detective who agrees to help him trace her. They board the ferry to Hull on Christmas Eve. 
 
Back on the farm, a young man out walking with his dog injures himself and stays the night, then ends up staying longer. Yet something is deeply wrong. Does he know what he is getting himself into? And what will happen when her husband and the detective arrive?

The Twin

A prize-winning, best-selling novel in the vein of Graham Swift's Waterland: captivating family drama with universal appeal

[An] unusual, memorable novel... Loneliness, combined with the beauty of the landscape, creates an atmosphere of inchoate yearning

This is a quiet book, humble in tone, with a fine, self-deprecating humour... It leaves the reader touched and with the impression of having seen and smelled the ever-damp Dutch platteland

Bakker's outstanding debut novel, set in the Dutch countryside, is one of those rare works of fiction that everyone should read

The pages are infused with the sights and sounds of the Dutch land. You can almost smell the donkeys and wet lambs that he portrays in his sparse, simple language

It could so easily be a bleak tale of regret but Bakker's spartan prose eloquently conveys humour

Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end.

After finishing The Twin, all the reader can say is: here is a true writer

Bakker captures the feel of life in the Dutch countryside in a style which is both dazzling and subdued. He has produced a poignant story, recounted in a tone at once spare and loving

Intelligent debut... Wonderful stuff from a Dutch writer with a feel for believable characters and a flair for what should be said and what needs only to be hinted

Gerbrand Bakker worked as a subtitler for nature films before becoming a gardener. The Twin is his prize-winning debut novel and will shortly be made into a film.

When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother's role and spending the rest of his days 'with his head under a cow'. 
 
After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. 'A double bed and a duvet', advises Ada, who lives next door, with a sly look. Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while, on the farm? 
 
The Twin is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies. 
 
Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, The Twin is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one's own hands. It chronicles a way of life which has resisted modernity, is culturally apart, and yet riven with a kind of romantic longing.

Gerbrand Bakker

David Colmer

By the award-winning author of The Twin 
 
On a hot summer’s day in June 1969 everyone in the village gathered to welcome Queen Juliana. It would have been an unforgettable day of celebration if only the baker hadn’t been running late with his deliveries and knocked down little Hanne with his brand-new VW van. 
 
Years later, Jan arrives on a hot day in June in order to tidy his sister’s grave, and is overcome again with grief and silent fury. Isn’t it finally time to get to the bottom of things? 
 
June traces in spellbinding, tender detail how the ripples from one tragic incident spread through a community, a family and down the generations. 
 
‘Illuminating’ Independent 
 
‘Exceptional’ Irish Times

Gerbrand Bakker

June

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