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A DEVASTATING PICTURE OF A DYSFUNCTIONAL BOURGEOIS FAMILY
From atop their opulent private mountain estate, We and Me follows the aristocratic Vandersandens from 1980 to 2013, for whom neuroses, claustrophobia, scandal and rebellion run rife. At the heart of the family is Sarah, whose coming of age is both daringly and sensitively explored in de Coster’s skillful prose. In this spellbinding novel, which has been compared to the work of Franzen, Eggers and Eugenides, Saskia de Coster provides a uniquely European take on the Great American Novel. With the family unit and some of life’s most pressing questions at its center, the award-winning We and Me paints a poignant picture of modern-day family life.
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Praise for We & Me
‘The Great Flemish Novel is not dead. It has just been written by Saskia de Coster. We and Me is a novel that will haunt me for a long time. Excellent and unforgettable’
HERMAN KOCH, author of The Dinner
‘For years the most stubborn, capricious and attractive pen of Belgium’
TOM LANOYE
‘As sharp as a knife and with great psychological insight the author investigates the ‘we’ feeling versus the longing for freedom and individuality. Sarah is a contemporary Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina. We and Me is like a breath of fresh air, because of its content as well as its virtuous form and fluent, ironic style’
OPZIJ LITERATURE PRIZE
‘Tender and cruel, Saskia De Coster unravels the illusions of social climbers in a novel that shows that every unhappy family is still unhappy in its own way’
TOMMY WIERINGA, author of Joe Speedboat
‘The book provides a wonderfully witty narrative about family relationships that everyone will be able to relate to in some way: an incredibly accessible novel that is hugely entertaining’
Buzz Magazine
‘A literary Desperate Housewives’
Jera’s Jamboree
‘De Coster paints a devastating picture of the modern-day nuclear family, revealing how loneliness can be threaded through the most intimate relationships of all. A bold and daring book’
ANN MORGAN, A Year of Reading the World
‘De Coster is highly original in her use of language: her choice of words and repetition of sounds make every sentence a story in its own right’
De Volkskrant
‘De Coster is a writer capable of reaching extremes lying just outside the experience and perhaps even beyond the imagination of most readers’
Vrij Nederland
‘With We and Me, De Coster positions herself at the highest level of Dutch literature. Pure class’
Liberales
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SASKIA DE COSTER (Belgium) is a visual artist, playwright and regular participant in television debates, as well as an author. She is also manager of Andermansland, a company that brings words into action in public space. She has seven novels to her credit, five of which are currently translated. Her work is described as haunting, appealing, and unforgettable. Her bestseller We and Me won the Cutting Edge Award (an award de Coster has won three times), and the Opzij Literature Prize, and was nominated for several other prestigious prizes; it sold over 40,000 copies in the Netherlands and Belgium alone. Her work has been translated into ten languages.
NANCY FOREST-FLIER is a New Jersey-born translator who moved to Europe in 1982 and has worked in the Netherlands since 1988. Her literary translations include The King by Kader Abdolah, Dissident for Life by Koenraad de Wolf, Gliding Flight by Anne-Gine Goemans, Mr. Miller by Charles den Tex, Departure Time by Truus Matti, Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, and most recently The Story of Shit by Midas Dekkers. Nancy also translates children’s literature and has translated for numerous Dutch museums and institutes, including The Anne Frank House and the Kröller-Müller Museum (home to the world’s second largest Van Gogh collection).
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AUTHOR
‘The spark for this novel came when I started to repeat some of my mother’s favorite sayings. For a long time I thought I was a very independent individual, until I heard myself say something and it was as if my mother was speaking through my mouth. Although we are very different people, this moment made me realize that there is not only a ‘me’ but also a ‘we’ that we are all inevitably a part of.’
TRANSLATOR
‘We and Me is essentially a detective story—a story of family secrets and the kinds of unspoken past events that are familiar to all of us. Who am I, and how did I get this way? It’s written in the present tense, which gives it a level of suspense that continues from beginning to end. That is the translator’s challenge: maintaining that suspense.’
PUBLISHER
‘De Coster is an amazing author. Her writing is fluent, bold and intelligent and she touches upon one of the most essential questions possible: what exactly is it that we inherit from our parents, and what defines our very own identity?’
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Saskia de Coster
WE&ME
Translated from the Dutch
by Nancy Forest-Flier
WORLD EDITIONS
New York, London, Amsterdam
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Published in the USA in 2018 by World Editions LLC, New York
Published in the UK in 2016 by World Editions Ltd., London
World Editions
New York/London/Amsterdam
Copyright © Saskia de Coster, 2013
English translation copyright © Nancy Forest-Flier, 2016
Author’s portrait © Johan Jacobs
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available.
ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-004-7
ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-024-5
First published as Wij en Ik in the Netherlands in 2011 by Prometheus
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.
The translation of this book is funded by the Flemish Literature Fund (Vlaams Fonds voor de Letteren – www.flemishliterature.be)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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