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In conversation with Maartje Wortel

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Friday November 1, 2024

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19.20 - 19.55

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EVENING PROGRAMME

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Koninklijke Schouwburg

Interviewer

Dario Goldbach

Image for Maartje Wortel

Photographer:
Daniel Cohen

Author

Maartje Wortel

After an unexpected event, Victorien buys a campsite deep in the woods, next to a military training ground. The only condition set by the previous owners, two sisters, is that they are allowed to keep living there.

A variety of guests check in at the light blue reception: from a soldier suffering from PTSD to a drug criminal, and even a celebrity trying to escape the public eye. For some, it’s a vacation; for others, a matter of survival. The guests at the campsite are forced to live alongside each other but have nothing in common. They can always leave, can’t they?

"The essence of the campsite, for her, was about escaping your life, yet was her life. It always had been. She thought: maybe I’ve never been able to step away from my life, to truly observe it, and that’s why it never really began. If she were to blow up the campsite, junk is all that would remain. For her, the essence was junk."

Camping is an eccentric and unsettling novel by one of the most original voices in Dutch literature.

Maartje Wortel (1982) studied beeld en taal (image and language) at the Rietveld Academy. She received the Anton Wachter Prize for her debut novel, Dit is jouw huis (This Is Your House). Her novel IJstijd (Ice Age) won the BNG Bank Literature Prize. Her most recent books, Dennie is een star (Dennie is a Star) and De groef (The Groove), have been widely acclaimed.

Camping

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