Amsterdam Stories

“Today his book’s very incompleteness makes it seem whole, and his ambiguity about the ‘life of the mind’ all the more poignant.” London Review of Books ‘Today his book’s very incompleteness makes it seem whole, and his ambiguity about ‘the life of the mind’ all the more poignant.’ London Review of Books This collection of short stories, with repeat characters, explores the “condition” of the young male of this period, his hopes and dreams, with a psychological intensity that feels surprisingly fresh and contemporary. Scottish Sunday Herald Earnest fans of Samuel Beckett with a fair knowledge of the topography and street-names of Amsterdam could love this book with a passion. Sunday Times

Jan Hendrik Frederik Grønloh (1882-1961) was born in Amsterdam, the oldest of four children. After an idealistic youth, he joined the Holland-Bombay Trading Company in 1904, becoming director in 1926, suffering a nervous breakdown leading to a short hospitalization in 1927, and retiring at age fifty-five, on December 31, 1937; he married Aagje Tiket (b. 1883) in 1906 and had four daughters with her, born in 1907, 1908, 1909, and 1912. Meanwhile, as Nescio (Latin for “I don’t know”; he adopted a pseudonym so as not to jeopardize his business career, acknowledging his authorship publicly only in 1929), he wrote what is now considered perhaps the best prose in the Dutch language.

Damion Searls is a translator from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch and a writer in English. His own books include What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going, The Inkblots, and The Philosophy of Translation. He received the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize in 2019 for Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries.

Joseph O’Neill is the author of four novels, most recently The Dog. Born in Ireland, he spent most of his childhood in the Netherlands.

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