Rien Verhoef Book order (chronological)

Few authors in contemporary English literature are as significant as Ian McEwan. Over his forty-year career, he has produced remarkable works such as Atonement, Amsterdam, and Enduring Love. His books are distinguished by precise prose, an atmosphere of suspense, and surprising twists that challenge readers until the end. Recently, his literature has emphasized the defense of scientific rationality against religious fundamentalism, a central theme in this narrative. The protagonist, Fiona Maye, is a High Court judge specializing in Family Law, known for her "divine impartiality and devilish intelligence." However, her professional success contrasts with personal failures, including regret over not having children and a troubled marriage. After her husband leaves, Fiona faces the case of Adam Henry, a seventeen-year-old boy with leukemia who needs a blood transfusion, but whose family, Jehovah's Witnesses, resists the procedure. The dilemma extends beyond the judicial decision, as Fiona, while advocating for rationalism, finds herself unexpectedly moved by Adam, a cultured and sensitive young man, prompting her to reflect on her life and emotions.

Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence services. The year is 1972. Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism and faces its fifth state of emergency. The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the fight goes on, especially in the cultural sphere. Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a 'secret mission' which brings her into the literary world of Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage - trust no one. McEwan's mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love, and the invented self.

A novel of remarkable depth and poignancy from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence’s response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence’s anxieties run she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.Ian McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of Edward and Florence at a time when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from McEwan—a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

Het is 1935. Briony en Cecilia Tallis, twee zussen uit een rijke Engelse familie, brengen met hun familie de zomer door op een landgoed. Het lijkt een normale hete zomerdag te gaan worden, maar als Briony haar zus en hun vriend Robbie bespiedt bij de fontein van het landhuis krijgt dit voorval door haar verbeeldingskracht grote gevolgen. Als later op de dag een misdaad gepleegd wordt beschuldigt ze Robbie hiervan. Dit heeft desastreuze gevolgen en verandert het leven van alledrie voorgoed.

Saturday, February 15, 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man - a successful neurosurgeon, the devoted husband of Rosalind, and proud father of two grown-up children. Unusually, he wakes before dawn, drawn to the window of his bedroom and filled with a growing unease. As he looks out at the night sky, he is troubled by the state of the world - the impending war against Iraq, a gathering pessimism since 9/11, and a fear that his city and his happy family life are under threat.Later, as Perowne makes his way through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors, a minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him. But it is not until Baxter makes a sudden appearance as the Perowne family gathers for a reunion, that Henry's fears seem about to be realised.

As a novelist, Graham Swift delights in the possibilities of the human voice, imagining his way into the minds and hearts of an extraordinary range of characters.

In het New York van de jaren tachtig krijgt een student die in de tunnelbouw werkt, te maken met het feit dat zijn broer een huurmoordenaar is en lid is van een bende die de bouwwereld beheerst.

'The reason Homer Wells kept his name was that he came back to St Cloud's so many times, after so many failed foster homes, that the orphanage was forced to acknowledge Homer's intention to make St Cloud's his home.' Homer Wells' odyssey begins among the apple orchards of rural Maine. As the oldest unadopted child at St Cloud's orphanage, he strikes up a profound and unusual friendship with Wilbur Larch, the orphanage's founder - a man of rare compassion and an addiction to ether. What he learns from Wilbur takes him from his early apprenticeship in the orphanage surgery, to an adult life running a cider-making factory and a strange relationship with the wife of his closest friend...

Bat Katanga keert, na in Cambridge ter bestrijding van zijn impulsiviteit wiskunde en economie te hebben gestudeerd, terug naar zijn vaderland Oeganda. In een helikopter heeft hij zijn eerste en enige sollicitatiegesprek met generaal Samson Bazooka, minister van Energie en Communicatie onder het regime van Idi Amin. Bazooka heeft hem nodig om orde op zaken te stellen in het ministerie. Maar deze selfmade man die intellectuelen wantrouwt, zet zijn voormalig liefje Victoria op Bat om hem in de gaten te houden.

Humbert Humbert, a European intellectual adrift in America, is a middle aged college professor. Haunted by memoires of a lost adolescent love, he falls outrageously (and eventually illegally) in lust with his landlady's twelve year old daughter, Dolorez Haze.Obseesed, he'll do anything, will commit any crime to posses his Lolita. But once Lolita belongs to Humbert, once he has got what he wants, what next? and what of Lolita? how long is she willing to be possessed?

Een Amerikaanse theoloog krijgt een student op bezoek die met een computer het bestaan van God wil bewijzen.