Writer Jan Vantoortelboom is the winner of the Boekenbon Literature Prize 2023. He received the prize of 50,000 euros on Thursday evening in The Hague for his novel Mauk, which is about a dying old man and his traumatic childhood memories. The jury, chaired by former culture minister Ingrid van Engelshoven, called the novel a “stunning literary portrait” and praised its “impeccable style” and “exceptional talent for composition”.
Jan Vantoortelboom (1975) wrote with Mauk his sixth novel, and it is the first for which he receives a major prize. The writer and writing teacher, who lives in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, was born in Torhout, a village in the Flemish Westhoek – an area where several of his novels are clearly rooted. The First World War and its aftermath ended up in his debut The sunken boy (2011), the sequel Master Mitraillette (2014) and his penultimate novel Hunter’s moon (2019). He scored a bestseller with his second novel, after being chosen as ‘Book of the Month’ The world goes on. Vantoortelboom’s oeuvre is “filled with axes, butchers, and outdoor bouncers, smelling of honest sweat, tar and stale beer,” wrote NRC at sometime.
Mauk, which was released this summer, was met with rave reviews – which nevertheless also recognized the dark tone and not easily digestible themes. ‘Now that I am dying here, I have the privilege of deciding that I would have skipped all this, this thing that people so happily call life, if I had been given the chance to do so,’ the narrator, Mauk, who is in his seventies, begins his story. . He is plagued by his memories. These are “extremely heavy”, the jury of the Boekenbon Literature Prize also had to acknowledge, “because the young Mauk grows up in the midst of paternal violence”.
Oppressive reading experience
The boy only finds escape in his imagination: he imagines himself as a cowboy in the illustrious Wild West. But salvation is and remains limited, because a fiction cannot essentially change reality. “I found the idea that someone believes in his own fiction so much that he is trapped in it very interesting,” said Vantoortelboom himself. in an interview. Mauk This makes for an oppressive reading experience.
In its choice, the jury, consisting of literary scholars, journalists and reviewers, showed a visible preference for strong literary constructions and ongoing trauma as a theme. Also the nominated novels by Saskia de Coster (Almost real), Tiemen Hiemstra (W.), Roxane van Iperen (I promise) and Richard Osinga (Mint) were solidly constructed and contained one or more traumas. The Boekenbon Literature Prize had almost 500 entries this year: in addition to novels, literary non-fiction are also competing for this prize. For example, this year the new books by Jan Brokken, Mirjam van Hengel and Judith Koelemeijer made it onto the longlist – although in the end only fiction ended up on the shortlist.
With a prize money of 50,000 euros, the Boekenbon Literature Prize is one of the three major annual book prizes, alongside the Libris Literature Prize and the Boon. Last year the prize went to the widely praised novel The song of stork and dromedary by Anjet Daanje, who also received the Libris Prize.