Rob van Essen Wins 2024 Libris Literary Award for ‘I will come back to this’

Rob van Essen has won the 2024 Libris Literary Award for his novel I will come back to this. This is the second time he won the award; he also won in 2019 with his book The good son.

Van Essen received the award tonight in the cultural center of Amsterdam Felix Meritis from the chair of the jury Kim Putters. The jury calls the book “of exceptional quality” and “the best novel written by Rob van Essen to date”. “We felt that this is the book that we would like the whole of Holland and Flanders to read,” said Putters.

In his acceptance speech, Van Essen addresses publisher Atlas Contact and his wife, writer Lize Spit. “My first reader, my co-reader, my wife: thank you.” “We’re celebrating fiction tonight,” Van Essen continues. “There’s a lot of non-fiction happening outside this door, all over the planet.”

Van Essen ends his speech of thanks with an adaptation of the poem ‘Softforces will certainly overcome’ by the poet Henriëtte Roland Holst:

I will come back to this it’s about a philosophy student who gets the chance to right a past mistake through a time machine. “There are many absurd situations in the book, as we have come to expect from this writer,” the jury’s report says. “But more than at other times, everything is now planned perfectly.”

The Libris Literary Award, together with the Boekenbon Literary Award, is the most important award in Dutch literature. Van Essen (60) receives a cash prize of 50,000 euros and a bronze medal.

He is the second writer to win the Libris Literary Award twice. Thomas Rosenboom had already succeeded in this, in 1995 and 2000.

In addition to Van Essen, five other writers were nominated: Cobi van Baars (for her book The senseless ones), Sacha Bronwasser (Listen), Esther Gerritsen (District 19), Frank Nellen (The unseen) and Maud Vanhauwaert (Tosca).