Who is Marieke Lucas Rijneveld? All about the International Booker Prize winner

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld is a Dutch author who won the International Booker prize and is the first-ever youngest author to ever win it. The debut novel The Discomfort of Evening is translated in English by Michele Hutchison. The International Booker prize was announced on August 26. Read on to know who is Marieke Lucas Rijneveld:

Who is Marieke Lucas Rijneveld?

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld who prefers pronouns they/them is a 29-year-old author born in Nieuwendijk, in the Netherlands in the year 1991. Rijneveld grew up in a farming family that was a part of the strict religious community in a rural area of the Netherlands. They work on a dairy farm and in 2015 have been awarded for their poem collection, Caulf’s Caul with a C Buddingh’ Prize for best poetry debut.

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The Discomfort of Evening Synopsis

The novel The Discomfort of Evening begins with a young name Jas who is angry and upset because she is not allowed to accompany her brother for ice skating. With a temper, she wishes that her brother dies instead of her rabbit. Her brother does die in the ice skating accident and the novel then talks about the grief that comes with the death of her family. Jas's family falls apart eventually because she starts getting dreadful imaginations. The story is inspired by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s life when they lost their brother. The Discomfort of Evening is already a best seller in the Netherlands. 

In an interview with The Guardian, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld shared that even though the book was published in 2018, their parents were yet to read it. Rijneveld said they wrote two words above their desk when they were writing the novel while giving the acceptance speech. It said, “be relentless”.

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The Chair of the Judges at the International Booker Prize, Ted Hodgkinson, who also announced the winner congratulated Marieke Lucas Rijneveld on their achievement on twitter. He also retweeted a tweet of the Booker Prizes mentioning that The Discomfort of Evening combines a 'disarming new sensibility with a translation of singular sensitivity'. He said that it is a 'tender and visceral evocation of a childhood caught between shame and salvation, and a deeply deserving winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize'. Check out his Tweet: 

Also read | Booker Prize 2020: Dutch Writer Becomes Youngest Winner For ‘The Discomfort Of Evening’

The winning duo of the International Booker prize

Rijneveld competed with titles including Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree and Yōko Ogawa’s The Memory Police and won the prize. Rijneveld will be sharing their prize of 50,000 pounds which is about $66,000 with the translater Michele Hutchison. Before this, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld also won the ANV Debutantenprijs, which is a prize for the best debut novel for The Discomfort of Evening.

Promo Image Source: Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's IG

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