Christiaan Weijts
(Leyden, 1976) his debut, Art. 285 (2006) was a resounding success, winning him three prestigious literary prizes, and a nomination for the AKO Literatuurprijs. Art. 285 is about a Dutch piano teacher and background pianist, Sebastiaan Steijn, who is charged with and condemned for stalking. Weijts intersperses his story with current affairs, modern day language use and trivia. He does so in his second novel, Via Capello 23 (2008). Here too the main character gets into legal trouble because of his contacts with women, but this time the scene of the crime is touristy Venice. In his novels Weijts likes to play with fact and fiction. 'Writing a novel is a bit like disassembling reality and rebuilding it in a world of words,' he said. Weijts was editor and columnist of the University of Leyden weekly Mare and is currently a columnist with nrc.next and the Groene Amsterdammer. His Mare columns were pubished in Sluitingstijd (Closing Time;2003). 'Het valse seizoen' (The false season) is the new novel of Christiaan Weijts and tells the story of three musicians, who all all confronted with the dark power of music, and are forced to radically change their livers.
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Connie Palmen's State of the Novel: 'Fake it till you make it'
'The Truth is fiction', according to Connie Palmen in her opening performance at Winternachten. Especially for Winternachten she wrote a State of the Novel: 'Fake it till you make it'. By now fiction influences important aspects of our daily life, Palmen posits. Classical twin concepts such as real-unreal and fiction-reality are up for reassessment. After her opening words she talked to Christiaan Weijts, who in his novels Art. 285b and Via Cappello 23 has proven himself a talented manipulator of words and truth. The programme was hosted by Kees 't Hart.
