Libris book prize goes to novel set in WWII concentration camp

A novel set in the final days of the Second World War has won this year’s Libris Literatuur Prijs, the most prestigious literary award in the Dutch-speaking world.

Bert Natter won the €50,000 prize for Aan het einde van de oorlog (At the End of the War), a book that the judges said “makes us look again at a period that we thought we knew, but now see through new eyes”.

The novel focuses on a single day, April 20, 1945, in a concentration camp, from the perspective of 31 different characters. The main thread of the story is a frantic search for the missing son of the camp commandant.

The jury praised Natter for the “gripping and cinematic” portrayal of his characters. “This remarkably constructed novel makes the reader a participant in the madness and horror of the war and the unimaginable suffering of the victims of the Holocaust,” they said.

The 58-year-old said the storyline was intended to confront people with the harsh reality but also the human dilemmas of the people interned in the camps.

“We have a wonderful tradition of novels about the war in our language, but in the beginning it was about the heroes,” he said as he accepted the prize in a ceremony broadcast live on Nieuwsuur.

“Depicting the Nazis as monsters and the people on the other side as heroes in a one-dimensional way doesn’t bring us closer. The danger in a concentration camp or an authoritarian regime isn’t the sadists, it’s the people like you and everyone here who are lured to the wrong side.”

The rest of the shortlist comprised two Belgians and three other Dutch writers, all of whom received €2,500 as runner-up prizes.

The full shortlist:

Lieselot Mariën, Als de dieren

Peter Terrin, Nog lang geen winter

Peter Buwalda, De jaknikker

Coco Schrijber, Het gezoem van bijna alles

Nadia de Vries, Overgave op commando