Books

An overview of the most important work of Geert Mak with descriptions of Edwin Krijgsman.

In America - Travels with John Steinbeck

Half a century on, Geert Mak sets off from Steinbeck's home in his own Rocinante, with his wife and his sat-nav Sandy. Mile after mile, as he retraces Steinbeck's footsteps through the potato fields of Maine to the endless prairies of the Midwest. read more >

Gedoemd tot kwetsbaarheid (Doomed to Vulnerability)

First published in 2005 How can we ever tell this to our great-grandchildren, the story of those final months of 2004? What will we remember about it? The knifed body lying on Linnaeusstraat? The skeletons that came out of the closet afterwards? The perpetually moving lips of politicians and intellectuals? The silence in the city? The tone, the new tone that was suddenly in vogue? How can one begin to tell? read more >

De eeuw van mijn vader (My Father’s Century)

First published in 1999 What is it that connects us with all those who lived in the century that has passed? Isn’t it – even more than their major and minor acts of heroism - their humanity, and sometimes their blindness? With this family history, Geert Mak has written a biography of the twentieth-century Netherlands. read more >

Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam (Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City)

The tiny secret of a mediaeval shoe found in the dark-blue mud at the bottom of an Amsterdam canal, the women’s revolt at the Begijnhof, the diary of a terrified priest during the famine of 1575, the tragedy of the maidservant Elsje Christiaens and the famous painter Rembrandt van Rijn, the apocalypse of Mayor Coenraad van Beuningen, the Great Freeze of 1763 and the forgotten courage of Wallie and Gijs van Hall. read more >

De brug (The Bridge)

Written as Dutch Book Week special in 2007, De brug evokes the atmosphere of a city which straddles two continents, connected by a bridge. These are stories about the old Turkey and the new, based on encounters on the bridge that links the European and Asian sections of Istanbul. read more >

In Europa (In Europe)

First published in 2004 Following a tangle of routes that led him to London, Volgograd and Madrid, past the bunkers of Berlin, the perfumed closets of Helena Ceausescu in Bucharest and the toy automobiles in an abandoned day-care center in Chernobyl, Geert Mak traveled in the footsteps of the 20th century. read more >

Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd (Jorwerd)

Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd is the biography of a village during the “silent revolution”, between 1945 and 1995. It is the story of farmers and big money, of the little shopkeepers and the advancing city, of the church steeple that collapsed and the newcomers who no longer bother to say “hello”. The story of beautiful Gais Meinsma, of the greengrocer and his homesickness, and of Peer, who breathed his last amid the curly kale. read more >