The Hairdresser’s Son

Gerbrand Bakker (trans. David Colmer)

‘A well-constructed, playful novel about three generations of barbers.’

Declan O'Driscoll, Irish Times

‘Bakker once again, through David Colmer’s bracingly fresh translation, explores with remarkable deftness the ways in which lives are interwoven.’

Paul Binding, TLS

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‘Bakker’s unhurried precision delivers an understated portrait of middle-aged loneliness, before a twist that probes the role of narrative indeterminacy in how we make sense of the world.’

The Sydney Morning Herald

Multi–award-winning Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker’s phenomenal new novel about grief and the unavoidable power of family ties.

Simon never knew his father, Cornelis. When his wife told him she was pregnant, Cornelis packed his bags, and a day later he was dead. Or everyone assumed he was dead; after all, he was on the passenger list of the KLM plane that crashed in Tenerife in 1977.

Simon is a hairdresser, just like his father and grandfather before him, but he is not passionate about cutting and shaving. ‘Closed’ appears on his shop’s front door more often than ‘open’, because every customer is a person, and people suck the energy from him. But there is one client he regularly interacts with: the writer. The writer is looking for a subject for his next book, and becomes captivated by the story of Simon’s father.

As Simon probes the mystery of what happened to his father, a deeply humane and beautifully observed portrait of loneliness emerges in another captivating novel from one of Europe’s greatest storytellers.

‘A well-constructed, playful novel about three generations of barbers.’

Declan O'Driscoll, Irish Times

‘Bakker once again, through David Colmer’s bracingly fresh translation, explores with remarkable deftness the ways in which lives are interwoven.’

Paul Binding, TLS

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 234mm × 153mm

Extent:288pp

ISBN (13):9781922585813

RRP:$35.00

Pub date:4 Jun 2024

Rights Held: UK & Commonwealth (ex. Can)

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AUTHOR

Gerbrand Bakker

Gerbrand Bakker was born in 1962. He studied Dutch language and literature and worked as a subtitler for nature films before becoming a gardener. Bakker won the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his novel The Twin (Vintage, 2009) and the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his novel The Detour (Vintage, 2013).

TRANSLATOR

David Colmer

David Colmer was born in Adelaide in 1960. Since moving to Amsterdam in the early 1990s, he has published a wide range of translations of Dutch literature. He is also a published author of fiction. Colmer has won many awards for his translations, most notably the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, both with novelist Gerbrand Bakker. In 2009 he was awarded the biennial NSW Premier’s Translation Prize for his body of work.

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