About the book

Ruben Sievez, the son in Siebelink’s bestselling novel In My Father’s Garden, which sold more than 500.000 copies, is now an elderly man looking back on his life as he wanders through his Uncle Anton’s empty house. As a boy he found there, in the basement, an album containing a photo of his uncle with
a younger woman. Ruben recognized her immediately as his mother Margje, who at that moment was upstairs drinking tea. All his life, Ruben has cherished an impossible dream about her. Did she perhaps love his younger brother Thomas, who rebelled against their religiously-obsessed father, more than she
loved him? If only he could have taken his brother’s place.

In Margje we return to the Sievez family, but this time the focus has shifted from the father, Hans, to other members of the family. In a spellbinding style, Siebelink depicts scenes from the eventful history of a family in which everyone tries to become someone else.