Book launch

Van Weemoed naar de Nacht

In March 2014 Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer will took up residency for a week at the AiR studio of SEA Foundation. Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer was ‘writer in residence’ of the 2014 edition of the Tilt literature Festival. He is an acclaimed writer of novels, short stories, poems, columns, essays, critiques, plays and song lyrics. His novel La Superba was published in 2013, and gained the Libris Literature Prize 2014.

Invited by Tilt literature Festival, each year a ‘writer of name’ is invited to stay for a residency in Tilburg to in search of the soul of the city of Tilburg, and write a short story about his or her’s encounters.

The ‘Tilt literature Festival’ in Tilburg, is a literary festival which combines the typical ‘Brabant atmosphere’, contributed to the population of Tilburg and its surrounding aria, and the love for books and literature. (This typical ‘Brabant atmosphere’ is difficult to explain to those who have not jet experienced it, but more or less it is a combination of spontaneity, enthusiasm, sociability, warmth, friendliness and party-willingness of the population.)

In the wide-ranging program of the 2014 edition, the four day lasting event will present ‘home grown’ poets like; Ivo de Wijs, Esther Porcelijn, Martijn Neggers and Arthur Kok, to shine alongside the more prominent names of Dutch literature as there are; Adriaan van Dis, Tom Lanoye, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Ellen ten Damme who all will make their presence at the event.

On Wednesday, March 12th at 15:00 there is an extra pre-tilt in the Zwijsen Building at Tilburg University. A spontaneous slotted extra meeting organised by Academic Forum. That afternoon will take a closer look at the different themes addressed in the wonderful book La Superba (2013), in which the Dutch writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer writes about his nowadays hometown of Genoa (IT). Genoa, the labyrinthine port city (nicknamed ‘the Superb’) where the author has been living for the past five years. Migration is the central theme of this autobiographical story about a writer who becomes trapped in his walk on the wild side. On the promise of the city through the eyes of a stateless, the light- and dark side of the city and the difference between the displaced and the home.

Classicist Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (b. 1968) made his debut with the poetry collection van de vierkante man (of the square man, 1999), an homage to the experimental poetry of his great models, Pindar and Lucebert. In the years that followed, in addition to poetry, he wrote stage plays, essays, columns, travel accounts, stories, political satires and four novels written in the spirit of Rabelais. In Het grote baggerboek (The Big Book of Dredgings, 2004) and Het ware leven, een roman (Real Life: A Novel, 2006) he played a game with world literature and divided the critics. La Superba shows Pfeijffer’s engaged side, and it has been greeted with unanimous enthusiasm.

The short story Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer as Writer in Residency, about the soul of Tilburg is launched on the 31 August 2014 entitled ‘Van Weemoed naar de Nacht’.

Read more about Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer