Phon
Sometimes it sounds like the blare of a trumpet. Sometimes like a prehistoric beast. It's something tectonic, Nadja and Lev say to each other. But these sounds didn't always hang in the sky above their house in the Russian woods. Once, the biologist couple ran a sanctuary for orphaned bear cubs there, but the volunteers no longer come, and while Lev loses his memory, Nadja battles against hers. Where has everyone gone? What happened in the year they'd rather not remember?
'Phon' shows how lonely people, far from the fractured society they have fled, relate to their loved ones, to history, and to the animal world they are part of. When all certainty falls away, it is the imagination that keeps them standing.
Awards
“In Marente de Moor's brilliant novel, imagination alone is enough to place a mammoth in the Russian forests.”
“A masterfully written novel of ideas about man increasingly struggling to endure the mystery of existence, by one of the most idiosyncratic authors in the Dutch language.”
“Impressive. The book conveys the atmosphere of the film 'Stalker' by Andrei Tarkovsky.”
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“In this time when literature is dominated by the explainable, it is a blessing to hear a solitary voice beautifully sing a mystery.”
- Vrij Nederland
“Marente de Moor continuously entices you to keep reading (…) her display of a highly confident and powerful authorship is at full throttle in 'Phon'.”
- De Groene Amsterdammer
“Marente de Moor's language is a natural phenomenon; it is not made of words, but of seeds that have fallen on the fertile soil of imagination and have sprouted.”
- Badische Zeitung
“More than craftsmanship. 'Phon' is, like all good literature, about stories and about how people relate to them. Read this.”
- Revisor
“A feat of great storytelling.”
- De Volkskrant
“Oh, her sentences! 'Phon' unfolds as ingenious and highly layered.”
- NRC Handelsblad
Translations
German
Spanish
French