The Dinner

Translated from the original Dutch by Sam Garrett

A summer’s evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the delicate scraping of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of politeness – the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But the empty words hide a terrible conflict and, with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened…

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. Together, the boys have committed a horrifying act, caught on camera, and their grainy images have been beamed into living rooms across the nation; despite a police manhunt, the boys remain unidentified – by everyone except their parents. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children and, as civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

(From Publisher)

About the Author

Herman Koch, born in 1953, is a Dutch writer. He was a renowned television actor on the series Jiskefet and a former columnist for the newspaper Volkskrant. The Dinner is his sixth novel and has already won the prestigious Publieksprijs Prize in 2009. Herman Koch currently lives in Amsterdam.

Librarians’ Comments

A tremendous and thrilling novel about differing (family) values; two brothers and their wives meet at a fashionable restaurant to discuss the terrible crimes committed by their sons.

Two couples meet in a fashionable restaurant. Behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

A “must-read” in The Independent, “best reading on a beach holiday” in the Financial Times. Our readers enjoy the novel, all copies are constantly borrowed.