Marion Pauw has with her book bird island won the Gouden Strop, the prize for the best Dutch-language exciting book of the year. She received the prize during the Evening of the Exciting Book in Utrecht, where the Dutch Thriller Ten Days was launched.
The jury awarded the prize to Pauw because the book was “written by an author who knows how to drag the reader along in a history that starts innocently but gets more and more sinister. A book that the jury members read in one go, that has a beautiful tension and the originality of the story makes it difficult to predict”.
The Gouden Strop, which has been awarded to the best exciting novel of the year since 1986, is worth 10,000 euros. Pauw received the prize earlier, in 2009, for her book Daylight.
Debut prize for Bas Haan
Marion Pauw was not the only one to win prizes in the Neude Library in Utrecht. Anya Niewierra received the Hebban Thriller Prize for her On the way† She also won the first edition of the Hebban Thriller Prize, in 2020.
Former news hour-reporter Bas Haan, who previously received journalistic awards for his non-fiction books The Bill for Rutte about the so-called receipt affair and The Deventer Murder Casealso had a chance to win the Gouden Strop, but received with his thriller debut Black the Shadow Prize. That is the incentive prize for the best thriller debut. The jury speaks of “an adult balanced book, where you never have the idea that you have a debut in your hands”.
The fourth prize that was awarded on the Evening of the Exciting Book was the Zilveren Strop. This year it went to Marjolein van der Gaag, for her Below the water surface.
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