27 Beats Per Minute

27 Beats per Minute is one of the most moving and most invigorating autobiographies ever written. This is a finely polished gem worthy of admiration * Knack *A concise masterpiece that summarises a life in the time of the pandemic in the personal, euphoric and precarious shades of one year. Without one’s realising, it covers just about everything: thoughts, emotions, literature, films, loves, feelings, memories, annoyances and doubts * Vrij Nederland *Philosophical, reflective, and with the pleasantly slow heartbeat of a writer who carries the reader through the city, European literature and history * het Parool *A very special book that I enjoyed enormously. All sorts of memories came up while reading , especially from the time I - an undescribed hitchhiker - discovered Paris as my first real foreign country – Cees Nooteboom

Henk Propper has for forty years written about the literature and culture of France, the country where he was a diplomat and director in Paris of the Institut Neerlandais. He was director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature before becoming a distinguished Dutch publisher. Propper writes for de Volkskrant, mainly about French subjects.