January
- Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
- Graveminder – Melissa Marr
- O Pioneers! – Willa Cather
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
- Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
- Sanctuary Line – Jane Urquhart
- White Teeth – Zadie Smith
- God Dies By The Nile – Nawal El Saadawi
- New Girl – Paige Harbison
- Monsters of Men – Patrick Ness
- The Brothers – Asko Sahlberg
- Leer mij je liefhebben – Kristine Groenhart [Dutch, untranslated]
- The Hunger Games – Suzanna Collins
February
- Catching Fire – Suzanna Collins
- Dotter of her Father’s Eyes – Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot
- Anne of Avonlea – L.M. Montgomery
- The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Diary of a Provincial Lady – E.M. Delafield
- The Solitary Summer – Elizabeth von Arnim
- A Monster Calls – Patrick Ness
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
- Starters – Lissa Price
- Eep! – Joke van Leeuwen
- Monsieur Linh and His Child – Philippe Claudel
March
- Divergent – Veronica Roth
- I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith
- The Third Miss Symons – F.M. Mayor
- Goddess Interrupted – Aimee Carter
- The Folded Earth – Anuradha Roy
- Half Blood Blues – Esi Edugyan
- Fire and Hemlock – Diana Wynne Jones
- Anne of the Island – L.M. Montgomery
- The Pink Hotel – Anna Stothard
- Foreign Bodies – Cynthia Ozick
- Mockingjay – Suzanna Collins
- Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke [here, here, and here]
- The Forgotten Waltz – Anne Enright
- True – Riikka Pulkkinen
- Spellcaster – Cara Lynn Schultz
April
- Island of Wings – Karin Altenberg
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl – Jesse Andrews
- The Lifeboat – Charlotte Rogan
- State of Wonder – Ann Patchett
- Lord of Misrule – Jaimy Gordon
- The Game – Diana Wynne Jones
- Code Name Verity – Elizabeth Wein
- The Life of Rebecca Jones – Angharad Price
- One Dog and His Boy – Eva Ibbotson
- Harriet – Elizabeth Jenkins
- The Foxes Come at Night – Cees Nooteboom
- Julia – Otto de Kat
- The Finishing School – Muriel Spark
- The Misses Mallett – E.H. Young
- The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
- Red Spikes – Margo Lanagan
- The Laws (“De Wetten”) – Connie Palmen
- The Last Song – Eva Wiseman
- Gillespie and I – Jane Harris
May
- Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
- Love Life (“Komt een vrouw bij de dokter”) – Ray Kluun
- My Name is Olivia… and I Can’t Do Anything About It – Jowi Schmitz
- Winter in Wartime – Jan Terlouw
- The Color Purple – Alice Walker
- It’s a Wonderful Life – Jesse Goossens
- Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
- Shooting Stars – Allison Rushby
- Repatriated – Adriaan van Dis
- Letters to Anyone and Everyone – Toon Tellegen
- Away – Amy Bloom
- The Book of Everything – Guus Kuijer
- The Dragonfly Pool – Eva Ibbotson
June
- Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady – Kate Summerscale
- The Storm – Margriet de Moor
- The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose – Alice Munro
- The Orange Girl – Jostein Gaarder
- Matched – Ally Condie
- Earwig and the Witch – Diana Wynne Jones
- Bitter Herbs – Marga Minco
- A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Suzanne Joinson
- Siegfried – Harry Mulisch
- I am (not) the Walrus – Ed Briant
- The Hidden Force – Louis Couperus
- Mesmerized – Alissa Walser
- Invitation to the Waltz – Rosamond Lehmann
- Dust Girl – Sarah Zettel
- The Tea Lords – Hella Haasse [1, 2]
- The Sealed Letter – Emma Donoghue
- Pride and Prejudice [comic] – Jane Austen, Nancy Butler, Hugo Petrus
- Kissing the Witch – Emma Donoghue
- Fables Vol 1: Legends in Exile – Bill Willingham
July
- Shadow of Night – Deborah Harkness
- Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Golden Hour – Maiya Williams
- Castle Waiting – Linda Medley
- Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
- The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents – Terry Pratchett
- Seraphina – Rachel Hartman
- Three Strong Women – Marie Ndiaye
- Tea with Mr Rochester – Frances Towers
- Mio, My Son – Astrid Lindgren
- In the Shadow of the Banyan – Vaddey Ratner
- Rasmus and the Vagabond – Astrid Lindgren
- The Weather in the Streets – Rosamond Lehmann
- Poltergeeks – Sean Cummings
- Island Beneath the Sea – Isabel Allende
- Enchanted Glass – Diana Wynne Jones
- Crossed – Ally Condie
August
- The Goose Girl – Shannon Hale
- Journey to the River Sea – Eva Ibbotson
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie
- Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurtson
- Evel Knievel Days – Pauls Toutonghi
- The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen – Elizabeth von Arnim
- Tolstoy and the Purple Chair – Nina Sankovitch
- Chime – Franny Billingsley
- How To Be a Woman – Caitlin Moran
- The Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
- The Human Part – Kari Hotakainen
- Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist – Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
- Past the Shallows – Favel Parrett
- North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell (1, 2, 3, 4)
- Painter of Silence – Georgina Harding
- Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (Narrated by Michael York)
September
- Alif the Unseen – G. Willow Wilson
- Coraline – Neil Gaiman
- Blackwood – Gwenda Bond
- Maybe This Time – Alois Hotschnig
- Daughter of the Forest – Juliet Marillier
- Charmed Life – Diana Wynne Jones
- Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
- Haroun and the Sea of Stories – Salman Rushdie
- The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller
- Juliet, Naked – Nick Hornby
October
- The Ice Queen – Alice Hoffman
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
- Velveteen – Daniel Marks
- The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
- Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day – Winifred Watson
- Broken Glass – Alain Mabanckou
- Persuasion – Jane Austen (audio, narrated by Juliet Stevenson)
- The Wolves of Willoughby Chase – Joan Aiken
- The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman
November
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
- Sea of Ink – Richard Weihe
- Excellent Women – Barbara Pym
- The Secret Countess – Eva Ibbotson
- The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
- 84, Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff
- Princess Princilla’s Fortnight – Elizabeth von Arnim
- Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
December
- Cheerful Weather for the Wedding – Julia Strachey
- Are you there God? It’s me Margaret – Judy Blume
- Gil Marsh – A.C.E. Bauer
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
- The Penelopiad – Margaret Atwood
- A Christmas Carol – Rod Espinosa
- Beauty – Robin McKinley
- The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
- Anne’s House of Dreams – L.M. Montgomery
- Anna and the French Kiss – Stephanie Perkins
Hello Iris
I am a retired professor who still writes and does research. One of the areas I am studying is the comparative assimilation of Black Caribbean immigrants. I will be at the University of Amsterdam for a few weeks in the fall, teaching and researching on this topic. I found your blog by Googling “Dutch literature”, because I wanted to know more about it, given my upcoming sojourn in your country.
Thanks to the suggestions on your website, I now have The Hidden Force and Eline Vere. Through Wikipedia I learned that one of the few experts on Dutch East Indian literature, E.M. Beekman, taught at the University of Massachusetts (where I also taught). My copy of The Hidden Force, which I borrowed from the UMass library, includes his notes and comments.
I am writing to let you know that I would like to join the ‘Read Along’ of The Tea Lords. However, none of my local libraries or book stores have it—so I have ordered it from Amazon.
One question: are you aware of any Dutch Antillean or Surinamese Creole writers? Again, from your website (in a post by a reader), I found the name Cynthia McLeod. When I get close to finishing the items I have, I will follow up on her work. Any other suggestions?
Sue from Amherst
Hello Sue (or Suzanne?),
Apologies for the late reply. First, let me express how excited I was to read your comment. A retired professor in such an interesting research field! I hope you enjoy your stay at the University of Amsterdam in the fall. Coincidentally, the comment you found on Cynthia McLeod was written by a PhD candidate working on the subject of Indian immigrants in Surinam. She might know more about Dutch (translated) literature. Unfortunately, I know relatively little about Dutch Antillean or Surinam literature. It is quite difficult to find Dutch lit that is widely available in translation, and apparently it is even harder to find authors from those countries who have been translated into English. I am able to give you a site that tried to keep up a database of the available Dutch literature and their translations. You can find it here: http://www.nlpvf.nl/search/ I typed in Surinam into the search engine and did find some authors, so perhaps it will help in your quest to find more books from those regions? I am sorry I cannot be of more help. I want to provide a more diverse list of literature for next year (if I host a Dutch literature month next year), but I simply haven’t been able to get it all organised this year due to personal life getting in the way for a bit.
I’ll be interested to hear what you think of The Tea Lords and The Hidden Force once you’ve read them. I’m halfway through The Tea Lords at the moment and it calls for a lot of questions on the subject of history/historical fiction, as well as writing about colonial settings in novels. The Hidden Force is on my TBR list for this month as well and I hope to be posting on it during the last week of the month.
Again, thank you for visiting and I am sorry that I have not been of much help!
Iris
Hello Again Iris
Thank you very muich for telling me about the website on Dutch literature in translation. It produced some titles for me both for Surinam and Curacao, so I am very pleased.
I have read about 100 pages each of The Tea Lords and of The Hidden Force. On the one hand, I like the Tea Lords better because the narrative is consistently presented from the viewpoint of one person (Rudolph); on the other hand, I find that the events and emotions depicted in The Hidden Force hold my interest more. I look forward to finishing both books and learning what other readers of your excellent blog think about them.
Sue (or Suzanne…whatever!)