Kristien Hemmerechts

[Eric]

I'm reproducing (in slightly amended form) here what I wrote about the contemporary Flemish / Belgian author Kristien Hemmerechts on the Belgian Literature thread, where the information might get buried:

Kristien Hemmerechts

Here are a few details about the Flemish author Kristien Hemmerechts (born 1957). I find it strange that more or less nothing written by her has appeared in English translation. I feel she deserves a plug.

She has written at least ten novels, and a total of at least 50 short-stories. In fact, the first three short-stories she ever wrote were in English; she was living with a Welshman at the time. But she soon realised that to express yourself fully, you have to write in your mother-tongue.

Her work covers life very much from a woman's point of view and is often (semi-) autobiographical, realist and contemporary: growing up, having children (and losing them!), human relationships, sexuality.

Bibliography

Hemmerechts, who is herself a Professor of English Literature at Brussels University, has published a lot of books, both fiction and non-fiction. The Wikipedia, for some reason, doesn't bother to translate the following words: "novelle" (novella), "korte verhalen" (short-stories),"roman" (novel), "resiverhalen" (travel literature) and "dagboek" (diary), but these categories in themselves give an idea of the breadth of her work. But I reproduce the Wiki list below.

Sadly, only a couple of her stories have appeared in English translation and, as far as I know, none of her novels:

Een zuil van zout, 1987 (novelle)
Weerberichten, 1988 (korte verhalen)
Brede heupen, 1989 (roman)
's Nachts, 1989 (korte verhalen)
Zonder Grenzen, 1991 (roman)
Kerst en andere liefdesverhalen, 1992 (korte verhalen)
Wit zand, 1993 (roman)
Lang geleden, 1994 (verhalen)
Amsterdam Retour, 1995 (reisverhalen)
Veel vrouwen, af en toe een man, 1995 (roman)
Kort kort lang, 1996 (korte verhalen)
Margot en de engelen, 1997 (roman)
Taal zonder mij, 1998
De tuin der onschuldigen, 1999 (roman)
De kinderen van Arthur, 2000 (roman)
O, toen alles nog voorbij kon gaan, 2000 (kort proza)
Donderdagmiddag.Halfvier., 2002 (roman)
Een jaar als (g)een ander, 2003 (dagboek)
De laatste keer, 2004 (roman)
V, notities bij een reis naar Vietnam, 2004 (reisverslag)
De waar gebeurde geschiedenis van Victor en Clara Rooze, 2005 (roman)
Als een kinderhemd, 2006 (verhalen)


Other links (in English)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristien_Hemmerechts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristien_Hemmerechts)

http://www.nlpvf.nl/basic/auteur1.php?Author_ID=214 (http://www.nlpvf.nl/basic/auteur1.php?Author_ID=214)

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/radiobooks/080319rb (http://www.radionetherlands.nl/radiobooks/080319rb)

[Eric]

Just to keep the WLF up to date with the published writings of Kristien Hemmerechts, she has published two further books since the above list was compiled:

In het land van Dutroux (In the Country of Dutroux) was published in the autumn of 2007. It is a novel, where the protagonist tries to keep an eye on her young daughters who have a dodgy father. Then she meets (as far as I can gather from the blurb - I have not read this book) some mysterious loner called Paul, who enters her life.

Ann (idem) was published in February 2008. It is billed as the memoirs of a 39-year-old victim of incest who has consequently become an anorectic. Whether these are real memoirs, or whether Hemmerechts has written a novel based on people she knew, I cannot tell. Clearly, Hemmerechts links with current events (the two Austrian cases, plus that of Dutroux help the topicality), but again I have not seen either book. So, I don't know whether sensationalism and a degree of prurience are involved. But her earlier fiction, generated by personal experiences, is certainly well worth reading, especially her stories.

Her short-stories are fine and varied. Her book of collected stories Alle verhalen (All the Stories) was already published back in 2001, and contains 60 of her stories, originally published in various collections since the late 1980s. Some 700 pages of Hemmerechts' collected short prose.