Press on Malva:

It only takes half a page to realize that the poet Hagar Peeters is also a novelist of exceptional ability. (…) The novel is a scintillating bomb of stylistic fireworks. Peeters the novelist draws on the finesse of Peeters the poet – a baroque poetic voice that is new and fresh and more than welcome in Dutch literature. – NRC Handelsblad ****

Hagar Peeters brings Malva to life, with a masterful narrative voice. (...) In her debut, Peeters shows how great the power of imagination can be and, above all, how to tell a story. – Het Parool ****

Incandescent and evocative debut novel. (...) The narrator veers from anger to yearning to acceptance and back again, before closing with a beautiful, melancholy final chord that demonstrates to the full the power, solace and purpose of poetry and imagination in general, and of this dazzling debut novel in particular. - Trouw

A long, lyrical and miraculously natural-sounding letter to father Neruda, an attempt to reach him even after his death by telling him her life story, right to its bitter end. - de Volkskrant

Marvellous surrealist novel (...), strongly reminiscent of Allende and Marquez (...), a fascinating patchwork of fiction and history. - De Telegraaf

Intoxicating language saturated with warm hues that’s allowed to rustle like a veiled wedding dress, and you have a lavish novel by a gifted poet. Peeters should make more excursions into prose.’ - De Morgen****
‘There are many parallels between the mute Malva and the language- and literature-loving Peeters in this father-daughter book full of yearning for recognition. - De Limburger****

Malva is patently written by a poet. – Elsevier****

Perhaps one of the most intriguing novelistic debuts to come out of the Dutch-speaking region this autumn. – HUMO*** (3 stars out of 4)

Hagar Peeters impresses with poetic prose full of magical realism, biographical details and psychological insight. - Opzij

Peeters cleverly unravels the myth surrounding Neruda without knocking him off his pedestal. An original biographical novel. Written, as befits a poet, in sparkling language. – JAN