Bart Chabot / Bart Chabot – Daddy’s Hand

Bart Chabot – Daddy’s Hand

Bart Chabot – Daddy’s Hand

Read our sample translation of Daddy’s Hand

 

About the book

‘My mother preferred not to touch me. That I know for sure because she never touched me. She did not want that I touched her, and she did not want to touch me. If we kissed each other, when greeting, we kissed the air; that could do the least harm. A hug was out of the question.’

Only after landing in the hospital yet again in 2018 and looking death in the eye does Bart Chabot ask himself the question, having delayed it for so long, of who he really is. He digs through the memories of his youth which, as we can safely conclude, was extremely difficult. His parents routinely belittled and mentally and physically abused him to the point that one day he made the decision to break with them. From his hospital bed he recounts in unsparing and moving fashion a rich but troubled life. Daddy’s Hand is a piercingly but nonetheless humorously written book full of unexpected lightness.

Press on Daddy's Hand:

‘A heart-wrenchingly beautiful autobiographical novel about Chabot’s painful youth.’ – VOLKSKRANT MAGAZINE

‘Chabot may have, as he puts it, died a few times during his youth, but that didn’t break him. His humour, his empathy and his sense of wonder about the world around him have proudly survived. Chabot has turned it into a splendid, poetic novel with hints of magical realism.
With gentleness and even a loving gaze, he sketches his childhood and the difficult relationship with his parents that will never, not even when he is an adult, get better.’ ****1/2 – TELEGRAAF

Bart Chabot (b. 1954) began his career as a poet with Popcorn in 1980. He broke through to a larger audience with his four-part biography of the Dutch musician Herman Brood. In 2008 he was awarded the Johnny van Doorn Prize for spoken letters. In 2011 his book Deeper Layers, a personal account of Chabot’s cerebellar pontine angle tumour, was published, as were his debut novel Triggerhappy in 2013 and the novel Easy Street in 2016.

© Anton Corbijn

Additional book information

  • Novel
  • ISBN 9789403174105
  • Number of pages: 416
  • World rights: De Bezige Bij
  • Price: €23,99
  • English sample available