Isabel of the Whales
Heart of Stone
Winner of the Vondel Prize for Translation
Hester Velmans is well known for her translations from Dutch into English of works by Renate Dorrestein, Lulu Wang, Isabel Hoving, and Jacqueline van Maarsen. Velmans was awarded the Vondel Prize for Translation for Renate Dorrestein's A Heart of Stone and her translation from French into English of Bernard du Bucheron's award-winning The Voyage of the Short Serpent has attracted great attention. Velmans' first sole creation, Isabel of the Whales, is a book written for children with the idea of empowering young girls and boys.
Bernard du Bucheron creates a magical land with characters who come alive in The Voyage of the Short Serpent, a story about truth, obsession, and the myth of utopia. Written in a jubilant mock-archaic French, Court Serpent by Bernard du Bucheron won the Grand Prix of the Academie Francaise for this highly original story set in a fourteenth century colony subsisting on a frozen Greenland outpost.
After communications with the Greenland colony are lost, a ship named the "Short Serpent" is launched with an abbot at its helm to reestablish contact and to revive the inhabitants' faith. To their horror, the colony's inhabitants are discovered to have reverted to a very primitive way of life exhibiting excesses of filth and depravity to which the crew of the "Short Serpent" begin to succumb.
His writing style is described as elegant, compulsive, and increasingly unhinged, in creating a masterpiece about human morality in inhuman conditions. While the language and style make this book a memorable read, The Voyage of the Short Serpent was also a challenge to translate. The author praises the English edition translated by Hester Velmans :
Hester Velmans' first sole creation is a book written for children with the idea of empowering young girls and boys to think of themselves as mightier and more capable than they may feel. It follows the story of a young girl who falls overboard while on a whale watch excursion and suddenly finds herself turned into a humpback whale. Thoroughly researched and based on scientific observations, Isabel of the Whales is an "eco-romance," bridging fantasy with reality in discovering the fascinating behavior and life-cycle of the humpback whale.
The main character Isabel is transformed by life in the sea and the challenges of survival after being adopted by a pod of humpbacks. Discovering that she is to become their chosen emissary, she becomes torn between her previous life on land and the knowledge shared by her adoptive family as they migrate from the North Pole to the equator. "Watch out Little Mermaid, here comes Isabel" declares Kirkus Reviews about this exciting new book.
One young reader has ensured that there will be a sequel to Isabel of the Whales by writing to Hester with some serious questions about the plot:
And the author's reply:
The Dream Merchant by Isabel Hoving is winner of the Netherlands' most prestigious children's book award. As a fantasy full of action and adventure, this book sweeps readers along on a riveting journey through a reimagined past. Trapped in a place between dream and reality, the book's heroes find their way back through a trail that leads them right into the very heart of the human imagination and to the furthest ends of time itself.
The principal character is an average twelve year old boy named Josh, who is something of a dreamer and who sometimes steals things. Together with his friend Baz, the boys are teamed up with Theresa at an old company that has discovered how to sell fantastic goods and concepts through our collective unconsciousness. Whenever the three children fall asleep, they are transported into the dream world that has been created by the company and soon discover that they are trapped there, haunted by nightmarish monsters.
During their journey back to the dawn of time to find the magical tembi, Josh and his friends must each make a momentous decision or slay a private demon before returning home, while two company employees seek to use them for their own personal gain. It is a modern fairy-tale that sets greed and selfishness against the search for truth and reconciliation.
The imaginative style translates well into the English edition. It is a fascinating read, with a rich plot filled with interesting characters who catch your attention, acting out their dreams in far out and imaginative places.
Velmans continues her critically acclaimed translation of the popular Dutch author Renate Dorrestein in A Crying Shame, a heart rendering story of the a hostile and troubling family life for two children who stow away in a stranger's automobile. The compelling emotional style of A Crying Shame is also found in Hester Velmans' previous translation of Renate Dorrestein's Without Mercy, a heartbreaking yet strangely funny, thought-provoking, and compelling novel about guilt and grief.
A Heart of Stone is Renate Dorrestein's first book to be translated into English. It tells a darkly humorous, yet ultimately compassionate tale of her character, Ellen Van Bemmel, who plunges us into the past as she leafs through a faded photo album and confronts the literal and figurative ghosts of her childhood. The story seamlessly alternates between past and present, taut with Hitchcock tension and warmed by a redemptive love story.
The Lily Theater, by Lulu Wang offers deep insight in the life of a Chinese intellectual prisoner during the cultural revolution. The book emphasizes the class system that Mao was trying to dismantle but which seems to have survived despite his efforts to raise up the peasants and suppress the intellectuals. Written from the eyes of the only child in a reeducation camp for top intellectuals, its young heroine does not seem to be able to adapt to the cruelty around her and finds herself at odds with her country's culture. The author gives us a child's view of how Mao was literally worshipped as a revolutionary deity.
Anne Frank gave her best friend the nickname Jopie in her dairy, a nickname that allowed Jacqueline van Maarsen to keep her identity secret for many years. My Name is Anne, Anne Frank, She Said by Jacqueline van Maarsen is a moving recollection that reveals the true story about the two girls' friendship. The author is a lecturer who specializes in Anne Frank and the topic of discrimination. She offers in this memoir a first-hand view of their heartbreaking parallel lives during the second World War.
Translated from the original Dutch, this autobiographical account shares an intimate view of both Anne Frank and the van Maarsen's half-Jewish family. The two young girls, who became close friends at the Jewish school in Amsterdam, were unprepared for the menace that they were later forced to confront. Otto Frank shared the diary with van Maarsen after the war and they discussed what Anne had written. Their close family ties led van Maarsen to write Anne Frank’s Heritage and to become a lecturer on the topic.
Hester Velmans contributed to her mother's autobiography: Edith's Story and, together with her twin sister Marianne, to a collection of stories called Mothers and Daughters edited by Joanna Goldsworthy. Edith's Story is a significant Holocaust memoir of a girl hiding in Holland, describing her life as a teenager during the Nazi regime in Holland. It is a vivid and accurate account of how one girl survived through a period of severe deprivation.
Edith's Story was winner of the Jewish Quarterly's Wingate Award while the audio version was recognized with the Talkies Award.
