Read our sample translation of The Immaculate

About the book

In The Immaculate, Marcel returns home in a final attempt to break through the suppressed past and discover why he is named after a great uncle who died on the Eastern Front. Mortier’s sequel to his acclaimed and prize-winning debut novel Marcel is once again a dark family history, in which the Flemish clay is ruthlessly turned over to bring the dark past to light. And Mortier does so magnificently with his elegant, evocative style in which not a word, letter or comma is out of place and which teems with marvellous images. With this long-awaited novel about the complexity of love, Erwin Mortier confirms yet again that he belongs to the highest class of Dutch-language literature.