Jan Brokken and the new mother novel is amazing

chi has read it, immediately recognizes its touch. To those who have not yet had this (precious) pleasure, it is difficult to explain. «I would define my books as “non-fiction fiction”: I use novel, biography, travel diary techniques; I add information on history, philosophy, art and mix». laughs, Jan Brokenthe Dutch author of In the house of the pianist (about Russian musician Youri Egorov), The Cossack Garden (on Dostoyevsky’s deportation to Siberia), Baltic souls (on illustrious personalities of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia) e The soul of cities (all published by Iperborea).

Cheerful storyteller

«If I speak of a place, I need the help of someone there: I have described Bergamo through Gaetano Donizetti, Paris through Erik Satie, St. Petersburg through Anna Achmatova». Brokken – often compared to Bruce Chatwin and Graham Green – is a cheerful storyteller, despite the dramatic story that, unexpectedly, is about to makethe.

What sparks your inspiration?
The nose. I immediately smell if there is a story for me: I have a big nose (laughs)!

Letters from the past

And in the case of Java Gardenscoming out in October?
It’s about my mother, whom I really only got to know after her death, when my aunt handed me 40 letters received from her from Indonesia. At 23, in 1935, she had moved first to Java, then to Sulawesi with my father, who was a missionary, theologian expert on Islam and anthropologist. Mom didn’t have a great culture (my grandfather had barely allowed her to deepen piano study), but she quickly learned the local dialects to get in direct contact with the people (among other things, she taught women to sew by typewriter). In her correspondence she spoke very sincerely about what she saw, but also about what it meant to be married, to live in the heat of the tropics, to have children early (the first girl had died a few days after giving birth, two boys had arrived later) . They were 10-12 page letters – she wrote beautifully. This is how I discovered that she wanted to become a journalist.

The profession with which you started, Jan. It seems true that coincidences do not exist…
No, in fact (smiles). Sulawesi was a kind of Arcadia, a paradise. Here, look (shows the photo of the mother on her mobile phone, smiling on horseback in a wild place).

Wasn’t he born yet?
No, I was born in 1949, well after their dream ended. In 1942 the Europeans were taken by the Japanese: my father was interned in a male prison camp, my mother and my two brothers in a female one. Dad was tortured – he remembered resisting only because of reading Memories from a house of the dead (where Dostoevsky relives his prison experience, ed); Mama was put to hard labor and she had to watch their barracks being bombed. They suffered from hunger and every imaginable suffering until 1947, when they returned to Holland. They had no home or work. My father’s major in Islam was not as interesting as it would have been today…

“Somatized the tensions”

And so what?
He was sent as a pastor to a village in the South, where I grew up with a sense of estrangement: both towards the environment and towards my own family, because I hadn’t shared the terrible experience of war with them. They all developed the “concentration camp syndrome”: my father began to drink, to stuff himself with pills. I too somatized these tensions: at 15 I could no longer move my joints, to open my eyes. It was then that my mother decided to read to me Doctor Zhivago, War and peace, Anna Karenina.

Here is the origin of his passion for Russia.
Yes. After countless fruitless medical checks, the doctor concluded: “You know what you have to do? Go away, leave yours”. And I: “When?”. “As soon as possible”. At 18 I moved to Utrecht for journalism school and later to Bordeaux for a course in political studies.

The journey of Jan Brokken

Did he recover?
No. The health problems continued. At the age of 30 I left for Indonesia, it was the first time: with my wife I visited the places where my parents had been in two months. Dad had told me: “My best friend died in the prison camp, and I have never accepted this loss; he seeks his grave ”. Result? I collapsed, I was in a coma for 24 hours. But the disease disappeared and never came back: that trip saved my life.

And this is the next book he should be writing! Therefore traveling is not escaping from oneself, but “finding oneself”.
Sure: it’s the best way to get to know each other.

I guess, then, that even when you’re interested in an artist, you’re actually looking for something about yourself.
The most interesting things come out when I investigate someone who is far from a restless person like me, like Giorgio Morandi. He never moved, was born and died in Bologna, lived in perfect harmony with the city and with his family, never married, lived with his sisters. I understand it, and I kind of envy it: if I had had another childhood, I wouldn’t have left home.

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