Wessel te Gussinklo has won the Boekenbon Literatuurprijs this year. Reading his book On the way to De Hartz feels, according to the jury, “like a high that you can hardly get rid of”.
Winning the prize gives Te Gussinklo (80) an amount of 50,000 euros. Two years ago he won the same prize, which was then still called the Bookspot Literature Prize. That was before The high stacker, the third part of a cycle of novels about protagonist Ewout Meyster.
On the way to De Hartz is the fourth part of that cycle. According to the publisher it is mainly a look back at the period when Ewout was introduced to philosophy and psychology as an eighteen or nineteen-year-old.
‘Addictive’
“Reading Wessel te Gussinklo is addictive,” said jury chairman Winnie Sorgdrager at the award ceremony. “You don’t want to miss anything about Ewout’s lifelong career. Paradoxically enough, this urge to read on wins over the unprecedentedly great vicarious shame that the writer manages to evoke so palpably painfully for his life-tormented other self.”
Other nominees were The return from Esther Gerritsen, The history of my sexuality by Tobi Lakmaker, The book Daniel by Chris De Stoop and all the blue by Peter Terrin.
The Boekenbon Literatuurprijs was established in 1986 as the AKO Literatuurprijs. In the past, the prize went to writers such as Bernlef, Arnon Grunberg and Doeschka Meijsing.
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