Neue Literatur aus den Niederlanden. Mit Christien Brinkgreve, Emy Koopman und Geertjan de Vugt

March 20, 2026 / 8 pm / Literature Café

LEIPZIG READS

Christien Brinkgreve, Emy Koopman and Geertjan de Vugt talk about their new books with Christoph Buchwald (Tommy Wieringa has unfortunately canceled):

Christien Brinkgreve "Ein Versuch, meine Liebe zu ordnen" (Engl. by Lisa Mensing, Hanser 2026)

After the death of her husband, Christien Brinkgreve rearranges their home. What appears to be an external routine triggers an inner movement in her: A woman looks back - at her life, her marriage, her role in the family and in the world. What remains of the decades they spent together? Who was she in the relationship, who is she without it? And how can it be that she has lost herself as a self-determined woman between love and other people's expectations? Brinkgreve's courageous book finds words for key experiences that many women share. A radically personal retrospective, a great and unsparing exploration of womanhood, ageing and the life choices we make out of love.

Emy Koopman "Slight Madness" (Engl. by Ruth Löbner, weissbooks 2026)

While filming a documentary series in Quebec, Dutch journalist Emy and her Canadian colleague A are put up in the same hotel room of an overbooked hotel due to a snowstorm. Although they desire each other, they keep their distance because of their partners. After Emy's return to Rotterdam, they begin to write to each other. An emotional connection develops, which soon escalates. This is the starting point of a wild journey, an intimate and artful tale about slipping into the "disease" of romantic obsession that reads like a thriller. Koopman elegantly interweaves her narrative with thoughts on literature, philosophy and art to reflect on how we abandon ourselves in love. She explores the pain and fascination of breaking the rules - and the struggle between self-control and passion.

Geertjan de Vugt "The desire to disappear. About fingerprints" (Engl. by Lisa Mensing, Zsolnay 2026)

The fingerprint is the epitome of personal identity. Its history is one of magicians, detectives, scientists, geniuses, charlatans and palm readers. In his fabulous book, Geertjan de Vugt circles around the social, philosophical, art-historical and existential themes surrounding the fingerprint, moving between fact and narrative. He tells of the Bohemian physician who was the first to study the fingerprint in detail and how it became interesting for contracts and in criminology. But also about the doctor who claimed to have read Virginia Woolf's fingers: "I think Virginia Woolf is disturbed." A fast-paced journey through history with astonishing finds: a rich, erudite and playful book about our obsession with uniqueness and invisibility.

Admission: 10,- / 7,- EUR ǀ Tickets at the Box Office or in advance online: https: //rausgegangen.de/events/neue-literatur-aus-den-niederlanden-mit-tommy-wieringa-chris-0/ ǀ Event organized by Nederlands Letterenfonds / Dutch Foundation for Literature and Literaturhaus Leipzig

About the authors:

Christien Brinkgreve was born in 1949 and is professor emeritus of sociology. She has researched and published on relationships between men and women, between parents and children and on dealing with emotions. She lives in Amsterdam.

Emy Koopman, born in 1985, has a doctorate in literature and works as an author, journalist and television presenter. Her debut novel Orewoet (2016) was nominated for several literary prizes. Her second novel Het Boek van alle Angsten (2020) made it into the top 10 of the new Dutch reading list. Her highly acclaimed third book Leichter Wahnsinn (Tekenen van het universum) was shortlisted for the Boon Literatuurprijs 2023.

Geertjan de Vugt, born in 1985, is the director of the Erasmus Prize. He was previously Coordinator for Science and Art at the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam for many years. He writes about art, poetry and literature for "de Volkskrant" and the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and has worked as a literary scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, at Princeton University and at the IFK in Vienna.