ABOUT
THE BOOK

Teenagers Lisa and Victor are closer than a brother and sister have any right to be. So close that they smother and suffocate one another, yanking and wrestling their lives and emotions into a tangled knot. In the flat, damp wooded fen that is their homeland, while their sarcastic father and impotent mother recede from influence, Lisa and Victor grow into loud, aggressive, foul-mouthed loners who are able to find peace and comfort only when alone together – at school, at home, in bed.

Fearful of and drawn to exposure all at once, the intensity of their incestuous relationship – and of their sensitivities and frustrations – requires a dramatic outcome. Whisky-fuelled, taboo-blind and sharp-tongued, The Happy Hunting Grounds is a long, long day’s journey into night, an unnervingly compelling tale from the marshy great plains of the northern Netherlands.