Gerbrand Bakker Book order

Multi-award winning Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker's phenomenal new novel about grief and the unavoidable power of family ties. Simon never knew his father, Cornelis. When his wife told him she was pregnant, Cornelis packed his bags, and a day later he was dead. Or everyone assumed he was dead; after all, he was on the passenger list of the KLM plane that crashed in Tenerife in 1977. Simon is a hairdresser, just like his father and grandfather before him, but he is not passionate about cutting and shaving. 'Closed' appears on his shop's front door more often than 'open', because every customer is a person, and people suck the energy from him. But there is one client he regularly interacts with: the writer. The writer is looking for a subject for his next book, and becomes captivated by the story of Simon's father. As Simon probes the mystery of what happened to his father, a deeply humane and beautifully observed portrait of loneliness emerges in another captivating novel from one of Europe's greatest storytellers.

Gerbrand Bakker's novel traces in tender detail how the ripples from one tragic incident spread through a community, a family and down the generations

The new novel, set in the UK, from the author of the Impac Prize-winning bestseller The Twin. A Dutch woman, a university English lecturer researching the work of Emily Dickinson, rents a farm in remote, rural Wales.  When she arrives, there are ten geese living on the farm, but one by one they disappear. Perhaps it's the work of a local fox. The reason for her move abroad gradually becomes clear: her husband is trying to track her down. Having confessed to an affair with one of her students in Amsterdam, she has quietly fled to Wales from a situation that had become unbearable. Her husband contacts the police and teams up with a detective to go and look for her. They board the ferry to Hull on Christmas Eve. But in the meantime, the woman increasingly seems to be losing her grip on the situation. Gerbrand Bakker has made the territories of isolation, inner turmoil and the solace offered by the natural world his own. The Detour is a gripping and subtle new novel.

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. Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while?