Read our sample translation of Day Night Still Light

About the book

For years, Systke Frederika van Koeveringe had maintained a logbook of laughter, endlessly fascinated with the phenomenon. What is laughter? When she heard the serious news about a tumour inside her breast, she automatically returned to her ‘laughter archive’, and saw that laughter presented a genial contrast with the cruelty of a tumour. From that moment, she hasn’t stopped writing: ‘I work myself to the bone because I, by accident, constantly imagine that I’m about to die. I live in a kind of now or never.’

Laughter and tumour are rather playfully intertwined. An essay about laughter alternates with among other things a dialogue between two doctors taking a biopsy, a monologue by Systke’s doctor, a list of everything larger than, smaller than or exactly 2.2 centimetres.