In 1837, two young African princes arrive in Holland. At the invitation of Dutch emissaries to West Africa, the king of the Ashanti has sent his son and nephew to receive the blessings of a European education. But unbeknownst to the king, the boys are to become pawns in the brutal game of the illicit slave trade. As they enter a dreamlike, sometimes violent, altogether bewildering world, moving from a Dutch boarding school and its terrors to the Dutch royal court, their common experience will pull the once inseparable cousins onto divergent paths. For the one called Kwame, the new life will be his undoing. Enlisting in the Dutch colonial army, he will return to the land of his ancestors to face a truth that will destroy him. But Kwasi will awaken more slowly, spending a lifetime convinced he has found a place in a world not his own. Only in the year 1900, reconstructing his past through an intricate series of flashbacks as his light begins to fade on a barren coffee plantation in Indonesia, will he discover the extent of his self-deceptions. A feat of literary ventriloquism reminiscent of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, Arthur Japin's internationally acclaimed first novel, based on an astonishing true story, is a fully original exploration of the meaning of friendship, belonging and honor.

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi

Literature & Fiction

Japin, Arthur

Contemporary

KNOPF

“The first ten years of my life I was not black.” Thus begins this startlingly eloquent and beautiful tale based on the true story of Kwasi Boachi, a 19th- century African prince who was sent with his cousin, Kwame, to be raised in Holland as a guest of the royal family. Narrated by Kwasi himself, the story movingly portrays the perplexing dichotomy of the cousins' situation: black men of royal ancestry, they are subject to insidious bigotry even as they enjoy status among Europe’s highest echelons. As their lives wind down different paths–Kwame back to Africa where he enlists in the Dutch army, Kwasi to an Indonesian coffee plantation where success remains mysteriously elusive–they become aware of a terrible truth that lies at the heart of their experiences. Vivid, subtle, poignant and profound, The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi is an exquisite masterpiece of story and craft, a heartrending work that places Arthur Japin on a shelf that includes Joseph Conrad, J.M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro and Nadine Gordimer.

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel

British & Irish

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Based on a true story, Arthur Japin’s new novel is a tale of consuming love and artistic creation that reimagines the last romance of the legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini. In Director’s Cut we enter the mind of Snaporaz, the lion of Italian cinema, as he slips into a coma in his final days. Having always drawn inspiration from the world of his dreams, he welcomes the chance to take account of his life and, in particular, his most recent love affair, with a beautiful but tempestuous young actress called Gala. Here is the story as Snaporaz tells it. Lured by the glamour of Rome, Gala and her boyfriend, Maxim, an actor as well, are hoping to be discovered when they manage the impossible: entrée to the studio of the great master. Despite an age difference of four decades, Gala soon becomes Snaporaz’s mistress, leaving Maxim, guardian of her secrets and her fragile health, to be an anxious and helpless observer of her physical and spiritual decline. As Gala becomes increasingly dependent on Snaporaz’s attentions, her desperation never to disappoint him leads her down a reckless path to anorexia and prostitution before the one true bond in her life is restored. Snaporaz’s intoxicatingly baroque—Felliniesque—account of the affair slyly challenges us again and again to ask what is dream and what is reality, and to conclude that the difference is irrelevant when such a genius immerses himself in his most natural element: the imagination. A dazzling tale from one of Europe’s most celebrated writers.

Director's Cut: A novel

Literary

In Lucia's Eyes

Following his hugely acclaimed debut, The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi (“Fascinatingly ambitious . . . Haunting” --The New York Times), Arthur Japin’s magnificently imagined second novel takes us into the most rarified and the most sordid realms of eighteenth-century Europe in the company of an extraordinary woman. She is a servant girl in an Italian manor house, educated by her lascivious lord, engaged to a young man by the name of Giacomo–and suddenly disfigured by the pox. Fleeing in shame and without warning, piercing the heart of her beloved, Lucia faces a bewildering new world alone. She will move across Europe for sixteen years–from Naples to Venice, Paris, and Amsterdam–working as a housekeeper, a lady’s companion, and finally, as a much-sought-after courtesan. In salons, opera boxes, and boudoirs, her curiosity and intelligence are nurtured by the revolutionary new ideas of the Enlightenment, passionately debated in spheres of society she has never known before. But not until her accidental reunion with Giacomo Casanova–now the tragic figure of infamous legend–will the lessons of her astonishing journey be revealed to her, and with them, her truest self. In Lucia’s Eyes is a rich and vibrant evocation of a time past, and an emotionally daring story of the individual spirit’s transformation by love.

Lucia works as a servant girl in Italy and is engaged to be married. But after the pox disfigures her face, she flees in shame without telling her lover. Years later, as a reknowned Amsterdam courtesan who never goes out without her veil, Lucia is at the theater when she recognizes her long-lost fiancé, Giacomo Casanova; and she cannot resist the opportunity to encounter him again. Based on a woman who appeared briefly in Casanova’s legendary diaries, Lucia emerges as a brilliant woman who becomes every bit his match. In Lucia’s Eyes is an elegant and moving story of love denied and transformed.

Vintage

Kolja: roman (Dutch Edition)

De Arbeiderspers

Text in DUTCH. "The Black With the White Heart". Two Ashanti princes, Kwame Poku and Kwasi Boachi, are taken from what is today Ghana and given to the Dutch king William II in 1837 as a guarantee in a business transaction between the Dutch and Ashanti kingdoms. The two boys are raised and educated in the Netherlands, after which Kwame returns to Africa while Kwasi continues his education in Weimar Germany and then takes a position in the Dutch East Indies. The novel is a postcolonial depiction of the Dutch colonial past.

De zwarte met het witte hart: Roman (Dutch Edition)

Arbeiderspers

De droom van de leeuw: Roman (Dutch Edition)

De gevleugelde: roman (Dutch Edition)

Mrs. Degas: roman

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

Books by Japin, Arthur

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

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel

Director's Cut: A novel

In Lucia's Eyes

In Lucia's Eyes

Kolja: roman (Dutch Edition)

De zwarte met het witte hart: Roman (Dutch Edition)

De droom van de leeuw: Roman (Dutch Edition)

De gevleugelde: roman (Dutch Edition)

Mrs. Degas: roman