
My Heavenly Favourite
ABOUT
THE BOOK
In the tempestuous summer of 2005, a fourteen-year-old farmer’s daughter makes friends with the local veterinarian who looks after her father’s cows. He has reached ‘the biblical age of seven times seven’ and is trying to escape trauma, while she is trying to escape into a world of fantasy. Their obsessive reliance on each other’s stories builds into a terrifying trap, with a confession at the heart of it that threatens to rip their small community apart. Indelible, audacious and impossible-to-put-down, My Heavenly Favourite is powered by the paradoxical beauty of its prose.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Michele
Hutchison
Michele Hutchison studied at UEA, Cambridge, and Lyon universities and worked in publishing for a number of years. In 2004, she moved to Amsterdam. Among the many works she has translated are La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Slaves to Fortune by Tom Lanoye, both Craving and Roxy by Esther Gerritsen, and Stadium IV by Sander Kollaard, for which she received the Vondel Translation Prize 2020. In the same year, her translation of Lucas Rijneveld’s novel The Discomfort of Evening was awarded the International Booker Prize. She also co-authored the successful parenting book, The Happiest Kids in the World.
Michele Hutchison studied at UEA, Cambridge, and Lyon universities and worked in publishing for a number of years. In 2004, she moved to Amsterdam. Among the many works she has translated are La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Slaves to Fortune by Tom Lanoye, both Craving and Roxy by Esther Gerritsen, and Stadium IV by Sander Kollaard, for which she received the Vondel Translation Prize 2020. In the same year, her translation of Lucas Rijneveld’s novel The Discomfort of Evening was awarded the International Booker Prize. She also co-authored the successful parenting book, The Happiest Kids in the World.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
My Heavenly Favorite is a staggering book about a forbidden love. The harrowing confessions of a veterinarian obsessed with his love for his chosen one: a girl far too young, who seeks to escape the emptiness of her rural world, her dysfunctional family life, and her imposed identity. Her search for freedom gives the pedophilic My heavenly favorite is a staggering book about a forbidden love. The harrowing confessions of a veterinarian obsessed with his love for his chosen one: a girl far too young, who seeks to escape the emptiness of her rural world, her dysfunctional family life, and her imposed identity. Her search for freedom gives the pedophilic veterinarian the opportunity to manipulate her. Rijneveld’s masterful style draws the reader deeper into this story. The narrative perspective is that of the unreliable narrator, the veterinarian, and Rijneveld compels the reader to engage with his shocking defense of the indefensible. Through the detour of his troubled gaze, you gradually come to know the girl better. A worthy successor to Rijneveld’s debut novel The Discomfort of Evening. Like the debut, My Heavenly Favorite was translated by Michele Hutchison, who once again demonstrates her great creative translation skills, as Rijneveld’s Dutch is a challenge for any translator.