[Amoxcalli]

First things first, I don't think Dutch authors should start writing English because of the wider potential audience. It's a personal choice.

I wouldn't overestimate the English of Dutch people either. At my school, where at least half of the students in my year have passed the CPE exams (Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English, C2 level English at a pass), it's still difficult to find someone with a good enough grasp of the language to fully understand, say, Lord of the Flies in all its allegorical glory. I'm pretty sure most educated Dutch (with at least HBO, for instance) are able to read Dan Brown untranslated, however.

In fact, I'd like to stress that I'm not speaking for anyone here. I, myself, prefer English over Dutch. If I had to motivate that choice, I would say it's because I feel "emotionally attached" to the language. Dutch is the language of my parents, English is the language of the societies I grew up in (expatriate societies in Egypt, Malaysia and Thailand that is).

I've only spent five years of my life in the Netherlands, out of a total of seventeen. I just don't identify with the Dutch country, language or culture. Maybe that's a shame, maybe it will harm my writing, but maybe it won't. I feel a foreigner in every country anyway.

Which reminds me, has anyone ever come across a novel written in two languages? It may not be very marketable, but I'm sure it'd open the window to a vast area of new literary techniques.


@Clarissa. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean to say authors aren't any good. I'm personally not so fond of Mulisch, but I think Claus is brilliant and younger novelists like Verhulst are definitely worth translating, so that a wider audience may enjoy their writing.