The Edges
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Mesmeric and tender, this is the tale of one man’s search for love and affection.
A man returns to his hometown to clear out the flat of his recently deceased mother. While there, he cannot resist visiting his former lover. As the storm rages in the night outside, he finds a kind of peace.
As we are drawn into the narrator’s past, we see how life as an outsider can shape someone – and what respite can be found in love and trust. Unsentimental yet aching with longing, Angelo Tijssens’ ‘The Edges’ is a deeply humane and beautiful debut.
Original title in Dutch De randen published by Borgerhoff & Lamberigts (2022)
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Michele
Hutchison
Michele Hutchison is an Amsterdam-based translator, editor and writer. She has translated more than forty books from Dutch including the winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize, The Discomfort of Evening by Lucas Rijneveld, the international bestseller Grand Hotel Europa by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and We Are Light by Gerda Blees (winner of the EU Prize for Literature). She is co-author of The Happiest Kids in the World and author of The North Wind (poetry).
Michele Hutchison is an Amsterdam-based translator, editor and writer. She has translated more than forty books from Dutch including the winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize, The Discomfort of Evening by Lucas Rijneveld, the international bestseller Grand Hotel Europa by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and We Are Light by Gerda Blees (winner of the EU Prize for Literature). She is co-author of The Happiest Kids in the World and author of The North Wind (poetry).
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
A debut about a man who – defined by his troubled past – is afraid to seek love. Living in traumatic fear this poetic novel keeps you hooked. And also noteworthy: no names are mentioned! Not one. (De Bibliotheek Utrecht)
Angelo Tijssens wrote with The Edges, his debut, a gripping and dark novel about a grown man adrift. Slowly, the reader comes to know his past — a past of violence and abuse. With great care, the Flemish author Tijssens constructs the portrait of this man and his harrowing youth. Translated from the Dutch with great precision and creativity by Michele Hutchinson. (KB National Library of the Netherlands)