Interview: Jente Posthuma, author, What I’d Rather Not Think About, and translator Sarah Timmer Harvey

Did making it to the shortlist come as a surprise? 

Being longlisted came as a complete surprise. I got an e-mail from my publisher’s Australian office in the middle of the night so that made it feel even more unreal. Of course, I couldn’t sleep after that.

Somehow, I had a good feeling about the shortlist, I don’t know why. It just felt like it was in the cards. And when I heard I was selected I was overjoyed. Still I can’t imagine winning the prize though. I do imagine going to London and enjoying myself at the prize ceremony but I can’t get my thoughts to go any further than that.

The novel is a tender portrayal of sibling love and dealing with grief in the aftermath of the loss of a sibling, the narrator’s twin brother.  Was the story inspired by a real life incident? 

For me, each book begins very personally, with something happening within myself. For this book, it was the emotions I experienced when my sister, the one person I thought would always be there, withdrew from my life. It was as if suddenly I had no ground beneath my feet and was falling into an abyss. In hindsight, our relationship was too symbiotic. We each needed space to live our own lives. But this rift happened very suddenly and made me doubt everything I had been certain of before.

My situation was different from the protagonist’s situation in my book — my sister is not my twin, she didn’t die and she’s not suffering from a depression — but the feelings were somewhat similar. It was a grieving process. “I don’t believe in family anymore,” is a statement from the book. I felt that way for a while too. It’s a cliché, but this experience gave me a profound awareness of my loneliness and, at the same time, instilled in me a confidence in myself that I didn’t have before.

You explore serious themes like mental health, sexual orientation, and suicide in a frank and light hearted manner. How did you arrive at the narrative structure of the novel, which is not linear and is written in short, vignette form full of single-page chapters and stand alone paragraphs?

I’ve tried to get into the head of someone who has just lost a loved one. It’s when thoughts arise randomly and memories suddenly come flooding back. There is no chronology. Grief can be like a constant nagging pain with sudden sharp stabs or soothing moments. It goes up and down depending on where you are, what you are doing and which thoughts this brings up. I hope that, with the fragmentary nature of the story, I have been able to give a good impression of the emotional life of the main character and therefore also of her relationship with her brother and how his passing affected her.

I prefer to explore serious themes in a frank, light hearted manner. I can’t write any other way. I like to zoom out to see how absurd our life is and how ridiculous we all are without trivializing our pain and the pain of others. I guess that’s just my life strategy. But I don’t want to downplay anything by laughing. Sometimes I use humour to release the tension and sometimes I use it in a confronting way: to stick the knife in even deeper. It can work both ways.

The narrator moves into her brother’s apartment after his death and spends a lot of time going through his journals. What answers is she looking for there and what does this obsession to find any answers or clues behind his sudden death say about the complex relationship between the siblings who are so close to each other and yet seem to be distant when they grow up? 

She’s looking for the one answer that would end all confusion as to why he chose to end his life. She feels as though she never truly knew her brother; as if she overlooked so much, maybe because they were too close. Their closeness blurred her vision. Now, she’s attempting to regain control of the situation. She needs something to hold on to. Knowledge of facts was always her anchor, as it was for her brother. During their life, they’d constantly brought up facts to outdo each other. Whoever knew the most held the upper hand. They googled tirelessly, but they didn’t really know themselves well. For the book, I also googled extensively, about the life history of Josef Mengele, the narcissism of Donald Trump, the loyalty of Ruth Madoff, the contestants of Survivor, the intelligence of pigs — topics that simply interest me a lot but turned out to fit perfectly into the story. They are all more or less about our drive to survive. And sometimes about precisely the opposite: the desire to die.

What does being shortlisted for the International Booker Prize mean for you, and what impact can it have on the readership and reception of contemporary Dutch literature in the English speaking world?

Visibility is a theme in my work, and in my life. I feel the need to be seen but I often don’t allow myself to be visible. It’s not shyness or modesty but more like an existential fear, as if it’s life threatening to take off my mask and show my face. At the same I hate to be invisible, or overlooked. It makes me angry. So going round in that circle can be quite exhausting. Writing is my way to truly make myself seen. It’s very personal, I want to be as honest as I can and I often struggle to silence the censor in myself. So this nomination feels like a huge acknowledgement.

Being translated has always been a big wish of mine. It opens the world for me. In the same way, I hope that my book will expand the world a bit for readers outside of the Netherlands. I remember well when Lucas Rijneveld won the International Booker Prize in 2020, how happy I was about that. No Dutch writer had achieved that before. And it had a big impact on the reception of Dutch literature abroad.

Any other contemporary Dutch writers whose books have been translated into English over the years which you would recommend? 

I most enjoy books that have something strange about them, writers that have a language of their own and who dare to take risks. When I read them I always think: I didn’t know this was possible; apparently, this is allowed too. It’s very liberating, it broadens my perspective. And it makes me really want to write. For a moment the fear is gone.

Goldfish and Concrete by Maartje Wortel is one of those weird books I love. It’s about the sea, her father, the city of Tilburg, a love, an unfolded duvet, and Anish Kapoor’s black hole where space and time disappear. This story is impossible to explain, it says on the back cover. And it doesn’t need to be. You just have to dive in. One of the characters in the book says that in a painting, sometimes more than in a face, more than in a pair of loving eyes, you can see, no, feel, that someone understands you. Her stories have the same effect on me. They’re strange and familiar, liberating and comforting.

Other contemporary Dutch writers I’d recommend are Kira Wuck (Finnish Girls), Inge Schilperoord (Tench) and Niña Weijers (The Consequences). And I love The Evenings by Gerard Reve, which was written in 1947 but will always remain contemporary and has only recently been translated to English.

***

Sarah Timmer Harvey: “I’m most excited by writing that changes my mind about something”

How did you come to translate Dutch literature and poetry?

I fell in love with literary translation during graduate school. It wasn’t my focus when I started my MFA, but I started taking translation classes and ended up doing an entire second thesis in translation through Columbia University’s LTAC program. It really changed the trajectory of my career and my relationship to literature. After I graduated, I started translating professionally and haven’t stopped since.

What struck you about the works of younger Dutch writers like Jente Posthuma that made you want to translate her second novel into English?

Dutch writers have a long tradition of experimentation, pushing boundaries and literary activism. I’m most excited by writing that changes my mind about something. I want fiction and poetry that show me new ways of looking at the world and that’s definitely something I find in Jente’s generation of Dutch-language writers. I first read What I’d Rather Not Think About in 2020, a year in which it felt like the whole world was collectively grieving and experiencing loss on so many levels. The first thing that struck me about Jente’s writing was that she’s able explore grief in such a raw and understated way. She’s able to zoom into life’s smaller, seemingly insignificant moments and reveal the conflicting emotions hidden beneath them. What I’d Rather Not Think About also combines humour and despair in a way that feels completely authentic. I knew immediately that it would appeal to readers around the world!

How was your experience of working with Jente while translating the novel? What was the collaboration process like and were there any disagreements with her or challenges in accurately translating certain portions and historical references in this novel? 

I loved every second of working with Jente. She’s incredibly funny, and clever, and always has a unique perspective. We didn’t have any disagreements while working together, but we did email back and forth about punctuation a lot. Jente’s writing is quite spare. She draws a lot of inspiration from Chantal Akerman and so prefers not to use quotation marks, too many commas or even questions marks where possible. I think Dutch is more forgiving of that than English but I really tried to honour her style as much as possible. I’m lucky to have lived in both the Netherlands and New York, so the references to both places were immediately clear to me, and I was also familiar with almost all the pop culture references. I would say one of the most challenging parts of the translation was transcribing the sections on Coetzee and Freeman Dyson. Jente had directly lifted quotes from a documentary series called Of Beauty and Consolation in which the Dutch journalist, Wim Kayzer interviews writers, philosophers, artists, and scientists about what makes life worth living. The series was broadcast in the Netherlands in 2000 and while some of the episodes can be found on YouTube, Jente hadn’t kept the transcripts she’d used to translate the English quotes into Dutch. If I translated them from Dutch back into English, they would probably wouldn’t replicate exactly what was originally said in the documentary. I spent a lot of time watching those videos, identifying the original quotes, making sure they were correct and still fit Jente’s narrative, because there was some nuance lost and gained between the two languages. I thought it would be a quick and easy process, but it ended up taking a couple of days! At least the series was interesting to watch, especially the episode on Coetzee because there is so much tension between Wim Kayzer and Coetzee, which makes for fascinating viewing.

Was it difficult to capture the brevity, the understated tone and dark humour of Jente’s writing in this novel which is suffused with themes of grief and loss? 

It was challenging at times, but the kind of challenging that I really love. In many ways it was also easier than some of the other things I’ve translated because of Jente’s incredible precision. Jente’s writing is almost like poetry in that no word is wasted, every single sentence in that novel is working on multiple levels. I spent hours buried in the thesaurus looking for ways to get my English to replicate her Dutch, to match her wit. That kind of research is pure pleasure for me, especially when humour is involved.

Since Jente can read English, how did her subsequent review process help the English translation to accurately convey the many themes and the overall narrative of the novel?

Getting Jente’s approval was important to me. I admire her so much that I wanted her to feel like my translation was something she could also be proud of. We’ve worked together on a few projects outside of this novel, and each time we work together, I gain a deeper understanding of how she uses language and space around her words.

What does being shortlisted for the International Booker Prize mean for bringing the writing of young Dutch writers to the wider English language readership?

The shortlisting of What I’d Rather Not Think About is wonderful for Dutch-language literature. Of course, Lucas Rijneveld and Michele Hutchison won the International Booker Prize in 2020 for The Discomfort of Evening, and that already put Dutch literature back on readers’ radars. I think that Jente’s subsequent shortlisting this year only proves the breadth of talent in contemporary Dutch-language literature. Jente’s Dutch publisher Pluim, for example, publishes so many incredible writers that have yet to be translated into other languages. It’s exciting to think that, through Jente’s brilliant writing and my translations, some of these writers might get discovered and read by people all around the world.

Majid Maqbool is an independent journalist based in Kashmir.