It is a literary unique: with the award of the Libris Literature Prize 2023 to Anjet Daanje, the two major Dutch literature prizes went to one and the same book for the first time. But The song of stork and dromedary is therefore ‘an extraordinary novel’, according to the jury, through chairman Beatrice de Graaf. A novel that ‘has all the qualifications to be exceptional’, a novel ‘of international allure that transcends borders and genres’. Daanje (1965) received the prize, worth 50,000 euros, on Monday evening during the live broadcast of News hour from the Amsterdam Felix Meritis. In November she already received the Boekenbon Literatuurprijs, also worth 50,000 euros.
A unique double blow, but none of those present could be completely surprised. When it was published last summer, Daanje was already received with the highest praise, also in this newspaper, and the novel was the champion of the end-of-year lists of literary critics. And a Libris candidate was rarely as dead as Daanje.
In de Volkskrant Book editor Wilma de Rek called it “unthinkable” this weekend The song of stork and dromedary wouldn’t get the prize. The novel is “so wonderfully good,” wrote De Rek, “that it makes all writers around it pale into little scribblers.” Critic Kees ‘t Hart made in The Green Amsterdammer distinction between ‘good books’, of which at least one is awarded each year, and ‘really good books’. Daanje belonged to the latter category, “it can simply be in the closet next to Nabokov, Van Bruggen, Flaubert, Mary Shelley, Franzen, Kafka”.
Only four times a woman
The award to Daanje was therefore not self-evident. Statistically, she did not immediately have the wind in her favor: in thirty years, the Libris Literature Prize has only gone to a woman four times before. And those who have already won the Book Voucher Prize (or its predecessor: the AKO Literature Prize) have never also received the Libris. Moreover: “Tradition has it that the Libris jury likes to surprise”, such as Fidelity wrote this weekend. This is how the dead favorite in 2020, Manon Uphoffs, explained Falling is like flyingagainst the surprise winner From the life of a dog by Sander Kollaard. Last year, also surprisingly, the still relatively unknown Mariken Heitman won.
A jury that wants to have an impact could have meant more to the other Libris nominees – Oek de Jong, Donald Niedekker, Yves Petry, Peter Terrin and Peter Zantingh. With forty thousand copies sold The song of stork and dromedary the most successful so far.
And the book was hardly topical at all. “When the world changes, the literature changes”, began the jury report, which made it clear that the jury had a special eye for books in which pressing themes from current affairs were reduced to a human dimension: climate change (with Niedekker, Petry and Zantingh) and artificial intelligence (at Terrin). Daanje’s novel, on the other hand, is about the centuries-long impact of a nineteenth-century English writer and her literary masterpiece, and thus about a ‘life’ after death and the power of literature.
The fact that such a novel fit in with the contemporary bustle already gave the impression that Daanje’s book was considered to be in the outer category. The Libris jury spoke of “an unparalleled literary edifice” on Monday evening.
Also read this interview with Anjet Daanje: ‘Halfway through I always think: why don’t I write a normal book?’