Mariët Meester writes both
fiction and literary non-fiction.
Her early years were spent in
Veenhuizen, a prison village
where a thousand inhabitants
and a thousand inmates lived
surrounded by 'No Trespassing'
signs. Her non-fiction book ‘Sla
een spijker in mijn hart’ (Drive a
Nail Through My Heart) is about
her experiences among the
Roma in Romania. One of her
novels, ‘Bokkezang’, has been
translated into Russian. In the
year 2019 her non-fiction book
‘De tribune van de armen’
appeared in Spanish
Mariët Meester spent her childhood in
Veenhuizen, a secluded prison village in the
north of Holland, nicknamed Dutch Siberia.
She studied at the Minerva Academy of Fine
Arts in Groningen. During the internship year
she traveled in a self-built gypsy caravan
through France, together with Jaap de Ruig.
She published the travelogue Een spoor van
paardemest (A Trail of Horse Dung).
After working for a while as a visual artist and
free-lance journalist, she published in 1990
her first literary novel Sevillana, situated in
Andalusia, Spain. A young woman, longing
for spiritual deepening, submerges herself in
Sevilla's Holy Week.
The same year she went for the first time to
Romania, where she stayed with Roma (gypsies).
In 1991 she stayed again with her Roma-friends,
which led in 1992 to the book De stilte voor het
vuur (The calm before the fire). In this non-fiction
book her compassion is visible on every page.
In 1994 Bokkezang (Bucksong) was published.
This poetical novel tells the story of two lovers,
one of them representing art, the other nature.
Bokkezang has been translated into Russian by
Irina Michailova and was published by Amphora,
St. Petersburg. Passages of this book have been
translated into English, German, Spanish and
Portuguese.
In 1997 the novel De eerste zonde (The First Sin) appeared. The main
character, a girl of twelve, lives in the Dutch prison village Veenhuizen.
Because of her concern with an escapee, she inevitably loses her innocence.
This bright and colourful novel has been reprinted five times.
In 2000 Meester was invited to participate in the Literaturexpress, a train
journey from Lisbon via St. Petersburg to Berlin, with more than a hundred
European authors as passengers. After the Literaturexpress she wrote a
short story which has been translated into German and Spanish. (Photo:
Mariët Meester with Flemish author Kamiel Vanhole. © Oliver Möst)
In the same year the
author collected travel
stories about Romania,
Mali and India in De
verdwaalde nomade (The
Nomad Who Got Lost).
Read an interview about
one of these stories.
Being a special guest at
the World PEN-congress
2002 in Ohrid, Macedonia, she wrote the essay Oblomov as a woman
(translation Alissa Leigh). It was published in the Macedonian literary
magazine Blesok, both in English and Macedonian.
In 2003 the novel De overstroming (The Flood) was published. This strong
and touching book deals with a young woman who survives a big flood in
modern Holland together with five other people. They are all living on a
man-made hill in the typical Dutch polder landscape. In her diary the
woman describes how their mutual relations are changing. A sample of this
novel has been translated into English.
Mariët Meesters novel De volmaakte man (The Perfect Man) appeared in
November 2005. Two young people buy an apartment in Amsterdam. The
owner (and their neighbour) is an eccentric old Jewish lady who has
survived World War II in Veenhuizen, the secluded prison village where they
both come from. Watch the video (English subtitled).
In May 2006 Mariët Meester
finished a non-fiction volume in
which she included everything she
has written about Roma in
Romania, Sla een spijker in mijn
hart - Roemeense Roma na de
revolutie (Drive a Nail through my
Heart - Romanian Roma after the
Revolution). This book was
reprinted in 2007. Watch the video
(English spoken). For Italian readers a passage of the book has been
translated. See: Piantami un chiodo nel cuore - I Rom Rumeni dopo la
rivoluzione.
October 2009 a new novel has been published, Liefdeslied van een reiziger
(A Traveller's Love Song). Watch the English video on YouTube.
In January 2012 De mythische oom (The
Mythical Uncle) appeared. The American
uncle of Mariët Meester suffered from
leukemia, but survived thanks to a stem cell
transplant, of which his brother – the father of
the writer – was the donor. In De mythische
oom she immerges herself in the pioneer life
of her uncle in the U.S., his religious ideas and
his extraordinary healing. A bilingual essay
about the misunderstandings that arose
around this book appeared in Asymptote
Journal.
In 2011 Mariët returned for sixteen months to the prison colony where she
grew up. It resulted in two books: Koloniekak. Leven in een gevangenisdorp,
2012 (Colony Posh, Life in a prison village) and the novel Hollands Siberië,
2014 (Dutch Siberia). Both books found a large audience.
Together with visual artist Jaap de Ruig Mariët Meester lives in Amsterdam
and in a wooden caravan in the polder. They also spend a lot of time in the
Spanish city of Málaga. Meesters latest non-fiction book is set in this city. In
De tribune van de armen, 2017 (The Tribune Of The Poor) she examines in a
personal way the annual release of a detainee during an Easter procession.
The book was translated into Spanish by Inge Luken en appeared in January
2019 as La Tribuna de los Pobres.
For an overview of the books, click here.