Leon de Winter's great novel is true world theatre, where the threads are pulled not just by made-up protagonists, but those from real life too. A dead filmmaker – Theo van Gogh – on probation in heaven, and his imprisoned murderer down on earth. A shady Jewish businessman and drug dealer and a black Franciscan priest who has bequeathed his heart to him. A writer called Leon de Winter, who, having been left by his wife, seeks comfort in writing a novel about his favourite enemy, van Gogh, and also with the beautiful Sonja Verstraete (although she is, admittedly, in love with the man she has been running away from for years). And a group of young radicalised Moroccans. They stage a series of violent crimes and plunge Amsterdam into a state of emergency. Ingenuity is called-for; either criminal or metaphysical synergies are needed in order to regain control. Or both.

The writer Leo Kaplan, almost forty, almost a millionaire, is an acrobat in adultery. Until things get too much for his wife Hannah. Kaplan must recognize that not only did he forfeit his marriage but also his creativity through his amorous escapades. It is not until a surprising reunion with his teenage sweetheart that be begins to understand how he has become the one he is today. A moving novel about yearning and the search for one's own roots.

On the morning of 22 December 2000, Joop Koopman, a 47-year-old, moderately success-ful Dutch-born scriptwriter in Los Angeles, congratulates his daughter Mirjam on her 17th birthday. He has arranged to meet an old school friend, Philip van Gelder, for lunch. Van Gelder wants to recruit Joop for the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, with the job of spying on a Moroccan suspected of being connected with the planning of terror acts. During their conversation the phone rings: Mirjam has had an accident on her way to her birthday party. Twenty hours later, his beloved daughter is dead. But Joop is not given a chance to abandon himself to his grief. A series of fateful events turn the life of the unhappy Joop upside-down: a huge coloured man called God, on whose motor-cycle Mirjam had her accident, refuses to leave his side; Joop feels an inexplicable liking for the Moroccan he is supposed to be spying on; and when his cousin Linda, whom he has not seen for thirty years, suddenly appears in Los Angeles with a Tibetan monk, Koopman does not know what to think or who is writing the script: a madman, a clever swindler or a hidden divine hand? De Winter's boldest novel to date: human tragedy, metaphysical speculation, physics-related theories, political espionage and greed for profit enter into an explosive combination that guarantees superb entertainment and food for thought.

What if Osama bin Laden had not been shot during the spectacular raid on his house in Pakistan? Exciting like a thriller by Frederick Forsyth, this novel blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy.
Geronimo was the code word that the men of seal Team 6 were to use if they located Osama bin Laden. The commandos astonished the world with their spectacular operation. But did it really unfold as the official version would have us believe? In this novel, Leon de Winter plays a masterful game with that question.
Geronimo is also the story of Apana, an Afghan girl who develops a passion for Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and the story of Jabbar, a Pakistani boy whose most precious possession is an old kitchen stool, a stool that could set the course of history off in a crucial new direction. Then there is the story of American excommander Tom Johnson, through whose compassionate eyes we view a world full of cunning and tragedy, a world that is at the same time magnificent.
Leon de Winter is the first author to call into question the entire official version of Operation Neptune Spear – in which Osama bin Laden was eliminated – in a high wire act of the imagination.
English sample translation and synopsis available.
Featured title in 10 Books from Holland (Dutch Foundation for Literature).

Sol Mayer, waiting for take-off clearance for his Boeing 737 flight from Boston to New York, does not yet know that this flight is to change his life: the attractive rabbi, star preacher of Yaakov Temple, the big synagogue on Fifth Avenue, falls desperately in love with the woman in the seat next to him, a singer in a small band. Thus his already somewhat troubled life acquires an added complication. He can no longer turn a blind eye to the crisis in his marriage with Naomi, heiress to a fortune, to whom he owes his social and material prestige. And the liberal-thinking rabbi's public attacks against orthodox Hassidic Jews have brought him some powerful enemies. Above all, however, his murky past in which Sol the roué and never-do-well rebelled against his powerful father comes back sharply into focus. It was only through a miracle that the young man, at the time an unbeliever, decided to follow in his deceased father's footsteps and become a rabbi. A miracle – or the delirium of his alcohol-fuddled brain? A question which has caused Sol metaphysical torment ever since. A series of turbulent and disturbing events force him to embark on a hallucinatory journey which takes him back once more onto his father's trail – a journey stranger than he could possibly have imagined.

›Serenade‹ is exciting, entertaining and witty, and at the same time concerned with serious issues. The story of a son who rediscovers his mother. And a disturbing book about the helplessness of all of us who follow the news, know about the terrible things that are happening in the world, and are unable to do anything about it. Anneke Weiss, in her middle seventies and long since widowed, has just rediscovered her lust for life and her desire to interfere in the life of her son Bennie, a would-be composer. Then the doctors diagnose cancer. Bennie insists that they don't inform his mother about her terminal illness. Life seems to be carrying on as usual, and Anneke even falls in love with the 77-year-old Fred Bachmann. Then suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, the elderly lady disappears without trace. The only hope is that she has gone off on one of her pleasure jaunts with which she is constantly surprising her son. But why doesn't she give any sign of life? Bennie and Fred set off to look for Anneke. When they find her it is not on the Champs-Elysées, but in the freight station in Split. What made Anneke embark on this »journey«? This novel, only superficially humorous and carefree, is about a trauma which can break out at any time.

»What is a Jew doing in a Porsche on the morning of the Sabbath!« are the words that reach Max Breslauer's ears when, driving through the centre of Amsterdam with a hundred kilometers per hour, he runs over a Hasidic boy on his way to the synagogue. A question which triggers further questions: »Who am I really? A Jew? A goy? What is my life about?« Max, 36 years old, 90 kilogrammes in weight and heir to a textile imperium called SuperTex, lands on the couch of a woman psychoanalyst and tells her the story of his life…

Tel Aviv in the year 2024: Israel is reduced to a heavily secured city state, a narrow strip of land by the sea. Those able to leave have left. Bram Mannheim has stayed and is looking after his ill father. Twenty years ago Bram, who grew up in Amsterdam, was a well-known university teacher in Princeton. When Bennie, his four- year-old son, vanished into thin air, his life collapsed; and with it Bram's marriage, his career, and his self-confidence. In Tel Aviv he runs a support service helping parents track down their disappeared children. Then a new series of suicide bombings shock the small country. And Bram discovers that an atrocious secret lurks behind the attacks which at the same time, however, gives him hope that Bennie may still be alive. A serious subject matter, brilliantly and poignantly told.

On a hot September day in Tel Aviv, a road sweeper is witness to a murder. For a moment, the man doubts his sanity, for he believes he has recognised an old friend in the murderer. And this would contradict all the rules of probability. For Sascha Sokolov is no ordinary road sweeper. Only recently, the emigrated Russian was one of his country's most respected space research experts – until the day when the rocket he had helped to develop inexplicably exploded on take-off. Sokolov and his old project director and friend Lev Lesjava were suspended – and this was the man who looked so strikingly like the murderer in the Rechov Etsel. Ever since Sokolov came to Israel he has been trying to drown his sorrows in drink: the memory of his wrecked career and marriage, his fruitless search for a Jewish identity and, last but not least, the unsolved dilemma of the role Lev had played in the explosion of the rocket and his friend's enigmatic, seemingly unscrupulous character… A rousing novel about friendship and betrayal, a search for identity and the achievements of modern science, and at the same time an exciting thriller about international Mafia machinations against the background of the impending Gulf War which threatens to destroy Israel.

When the once-promising actor Tom Green returns to Hollywood after serving a prison sentence, he has only two hundred dollars in his pocket and virtually no prospects. By chance, he meets two acting colleagues who, like himself, have known better days: the sixty-year-old Jimmy Kage, and the seventy-year-old Oscar Award winner Floyd Benson who is now earning his living installing burglar alarms. During a nocturnal pub crawl, the three men come across a horribly mutilated corpse whom one of them knows. Floyd Benson suspects that the death of Tino, the petty gangster, has something to do with the Mafia and huge sums of money. The three likeable Losers plan the coup of their lives – which involves acting in all seriousness, this time without textbook or camera.

The renowned Dutch brain surgeon Jaap Hollander has retired, but still can’t find peace. Ever since his daughter disappeared in Israel ten years ago, he has returned each year to where it happened.
This time, he is unexpectedly asked during the trip to carry out an incredibly risky brain operation. He agrees, even though the chances of success are minimal, because not only the life of his powerful patient depends on it, but perhaps also a new clue leading to his daughter’s whereabouts.
 

The diplomat Felix Hoffmann is an unusual hero, grieving for his dead children, suffering from insomnia and searching for truth in the works of the philosopher Spinoza. Hoffmann reads Spinoza in his sleepless nights, stuffing himself with leftovers from dinners until the dawn breaks. Hoffman - appointed ambassador to Prague late in life - lands up in a word of secrets and double meanings; in the end escape is his only way out.

Paul de Wit has one obsession: He wants to correct history. And the history of his own family in particular. He thinks he has found his twin brother, who had been presumed dead, on the Place de la Bastille, of all places. This kindles in him the insane hope that he can reconcile himself with his own history after all.