War and Turpentine

Literature & Fiction

Hertmans, Stefan

Literary

RANDOM HOUSE UK

In this revealing and poignant story, Stefan Hertmans uncovers haunting details about the previous owner of his house and the crime he committed as a member of the Nazi police.\nIn 1979 Stefan Hertmans became obsessed with a rundown townhouse in Ghent. The previous owners were mentioned only in passing during the acquisition, and it wasn’t until the new millennium, long after he had sold the house, that he came across a memoirby the owner’s son Adriaan Verhulst, a distinguished history professor and a former teacher of Hertmans’, which revealed that his father was a former SS officer. 
Hertmans finds he is profoundly haunted by images of the family as ghostly presences in the rooms he had once known so well, he begins a journey of discovery—not to tell the story of Adriaan’s father, but rather the story of the house and the people who lived in it and passed through it. Archives, interviews with relatives and personal documents help him imagine the world of this house as they reveal not only a marital drama, but also a connection between past visitors to the house and important figures in the culture and politics of Flanders now. 
A stunning and immersive reimagining of a family in a historical moment of great upheaval confirms Hertmans’ always brilliant melding of fiction and nonfiction.

The Ascent: A House Can Have Many Secrets

Pantheon

Longlisted for the International Man Booker Prize A New York Times Top 10 Best Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year Longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award The story of Urbain Martien lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died. In War and Turpentine, his grandson, a writer, retells his grandfather’s story, the notebooks providing a key to the locked chambers of Urbain’s memory. But who is he, really? There is Urbain the child of a lowly church painter; Urbain the young man, who narrowly escapes death in an iron foundry; Urbain the soldier; and Urbain the man, married to his true love's sister, haunted by the war and his interrupted dreams of life as an artist. Wrestling with this tale, the grandson straddles past and present, searching for a way to understand his own part in both. As artfully rendered as a Renaissance fresco, War and Turpentine paints an extraordinary portrait of a man, revealing how a single life can echo through the ages.

War and Turpentine: A Novel

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Vintage

Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017 A New York Times Top 10 Best Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year The life of Urbain Martien—artist, soldier, survivor of World War I—lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died in 1981. In War and Turpentine, his grandson, a writer, retells his grandfather’s story, the notebooks providing a key to the locked chambers of Urbain’s memory. With vivid detail, the grandson recounts a whole life: Urbain as the child of a lowly church painter, retouching his father’s work;dodging death in a foundry; fighting in the war that altered the course of history; marrying the sister of the woman he truly loved; being haunted by an ever-present reminder of the artist he had hoped to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this tale, the grandson straddles past and present, searching for a way to understand his own part in both. As artfully rendered as a Renaissance fresco, War and Turpentine paints an extraordinary portrait of one man’s life and reveals how that life echoed down through the generations. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout)

War and Turpentine: A novel

In this dazzling work of historical fiction, the Man Booker International–long-listed author of War and Turpentine reconstructs the tragic story of a medieval noblewoman who leaves her home and family for the love of a Jewish boy. In eleventh-century France, Vigdis Adelaïs, a young woman from a prosperous Christian family, falls in love with David Todros, a rabbi’s son and yeshiva student. To be together, the couple must flee their city, and Vigdis must renounce her life of privilege and comfort. Pursued by her father’s knights and in constant danger of betrayal, the lovers embark on a dangerous journey to the south of France, only to find their brief happiness destroyed by the vicious wave of anti-Semitism sweeping through Europe with the onset of the First Crusade. What begins as a story of forbidden love evolves into a globe-trotting trek spanning continents, as Vigdis undertakes an epic journey to Cairo and back, enduring the unimaginable in hopes of finding her lost children. Based on two fragments from the Cairo Genizah—a repository of more than three hundred thousand manuscripts and documents stored in the upper chamber of a synagogue in Old Cairo—Stefan Hertmans has pieced together a remarkable work of imagination, re-creating the tragic story of two star-crossed lovers whose steps he retraces almost a millennium later. Blending fact and fiction, and with immense imagination and stylistic ingenuity, Hertmans painstakingly depicts Vigdis’s terrible trials, bringing the Middle Ages to life and illuminating a chaotic world of love and hate.

The Convert: A Novel

A brilliant reconstruction of an incredible journey across medieval Europe to Egypt, and an untold story of forbidden love.\n'Enthralling... A spectacular tale told with spectacular accomplishment' Sunday Times, Books of the Year\nIn the small village in Provence where Stefan Hertmans has made his home, people have long spoken of an ancient pogrom and hidden treasure. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, an extraordinary collection of Jewish documents was found in a synagogue in Cairo.\nHertmans has based The Convert on these historical sources, tracing the life of a young Christian noblewoman who abandoned everything for the love of a rabbi's son. In this startlingly contemporary novel, Hertmans follows in her footsteps as the lovers flee through France together, pursued by crusading knights, and recounts her dazzling journey full of love and hardship, courage and hate, as she travels on towards Jerusalem alone.\nJewish National Book Awards 2020 Finalist

The Convert: Stefan Hertmans

Contemporary

WINNER OF THE VONDEL PRIZE 2017 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Times, Sunday Times and The Economist, and one of the 10 Best Books of 2016 in the New York Times Shortly before his death at the age of 90, Stefan Hertmans’ grandfather Urbain gave his grandson a set of notebooks. As Stefan began to read, he found himself drawn into a conversation across the centuries, as Urbain – so quiet and reserved in life – revealed his eloquence and his private passions on the page. Gradually, as he learned of his grandfather’s heroics in the First World War, the loss of his great love, and his later years spent seeking solace in art and painting, a portrait emerged of the grandfather he had never fully known. War and Turpentine is an exquisite, loving reconstruction of a man’s interior life, at once deeply personal and yet so evocative of many of his generation, affected by the long shadow of war. In beautiful, glimmering prose, Hertmans shows us how our experiences shape us all, and how, even in a life of sorrow and heartache, dignity can be found.

HARVILL/SECKER

Text Publishing

Le coeur converti

Gallimard]

Фоліо

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hertmans, Stefan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hertmans, Stefan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hertmans, Stefan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

War and Turpentine

The Ascent: A House Can Have Many Secrets

War and Turpentine: A Novel

War and Turpentine: A novel

The Convert: A Novel

The Convert: Stefan Hertmans

War and Turpentine

War and Turpentine

Le coeur converti

Le coeur converti