Arnon Grunberg

Arnon Yasha Yves Grünberg (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɑrnɔ ˈɲɑɕaː iːf ˈxrʏmbɛr(ə)x]; born 22 February 1971) is a Dutch writer of novels, essays, and columns, as well as a journalist. He published some of his work under the heteronym Marek van der Jagt. He lives in New York. His work has been translated into 30 languages. In 2022 he received the PC Hooftprijs, a Dutch literary lifetime achievement award. His most acclaimed and successful novels are Blue Mondays and Tirza. The New York Times called the latter 'grimly comic and unflinching (…) while not always enjoyable, it is never less than enthralling'. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described him as 'the Dutch Philip Roth'.

Early life

Grunberg was born Arnon Yasha Yves Grünberg on 22 February 1971 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He grew up in a family of Jewish immigrants, originally from Germany. His mother was a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Grunberg attended the Vossius Gymnasium in Amsterdam, but was expelled from the school in 1988. Before publishing his first novel, he held various odd jobs, and tried his hand at acting in a short film by Dutch avant-garde film maker Cyrus Frisch. From 1990 to 1993, Grunberg ran his own publishing house, Kasimir, which was financially unsuccessful.

Novels

Grunberg made his literary debut in 1994 with the novel Blue Mondays (Blauwe maandagen), which won the Anton Wachter Prize for best debut novel. Critics hailed it as a "grotesque comedy, a rarity in Dutch literature." In 2000, he was the first to win this debut prize again, but this time under his heteronym Marek van der Jagt, for the novel The Story of My Baldness (De geschiedenis van mijn kaalheid).

The much-acclaimed novel Tirza, about a father's obsessive love for his graduating daughter, was Grunberg's first novel to be made into a movie, Tirza, in 2010, after winning the Dutch Libris Prize and the Belgian Golden Owl in 2007. This book has been translated into fourteen languages and has received critical acclaim in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Le Figaro, among others. A 2010 national poll of literary critics, academics and writers held by the magazine De Groene Amsterdammer elected Tirza as the "most important novel of the 21st century," over Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones and Ian McEwan's Saturday. In 2009, Grunberg won the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire body of work and in 2011 he received the Frans Kellendonk-prijs.

In September 2008, Grunberg published his seventh novel, Onze Oom (Our Uncle). The story is about a girl who is like a dead person among the living and a major who tries to overcome his shame by leading an insurgent army. Grunberg incorporated his experiences in the army in Afghanistan into this book. Since then, Grunberg has published various novels, including Skin and Hair in 2010 (Huid en Haar), The Man without Illness (De Man Zonder Ziekte) in 2012 and Birthmarks (Moedervlekken) in 2016, which were translated into French and German, among other languages. These books also received considerable acclaim. Le Monde called The Man without Illness 'a wonderful gateway to the work of Arnon Grunberg, [who is] one of the most fascinating writers of his generation'. His work is also available in Portugal, Hungary, Israel, Turkey and Brazil.

Journalism and essays

In addition to his many novels, he has written newspaper and magazine columns, essays, poetry, scenarios and plays. Through his essays, opinion articles and lectures, Arnon Grunberg has made a major contribution to the public debate in international media about issues such as migration policy, discrimination, racism and human trafficking. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Le Monde, Liberération, The Times, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Courrier International, Revista Contexto and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Grunberg is also known for his literary journalism and periods of complete immersion into diverse aspects of society. He has been embedded with Dutch troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and visited Guantánamo Bay. He has spent time with and written about masseurs at a Romanian resort, patients in a Belgian psychiatric ward, dining-car waiters on a Swiss train, and an ordinary Dutch family on vacation. In 2009 his reports were published in a book called Chambermaids and Soldiers (Kamermeisjes en Soldaten), followed by Slaughters and Psychiatrists (Slachters en Psychiaters) in 2021. The latter contains his reports from 2009 until 2020. Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant praised the book: “Grunberg can not only sketch an unknown world with a few sharp strokes of the pen, but also bring it to vivid life."

Grunberg states he writes because he wants to know 'how people do something like living their life': "Everything is field research: friendship, sex, love, and work. It is only by writing about it that you can escape from it."

Academic and scientific research

In 2008 Grunberg became a writer-in-residence and guest lecturer at the Leiden University and Wageningen University and Research Centre. In October 2014, he became an honorary fellow at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Amsterdam. His lectures focused on issues related to privacy and surveillance, and together with his students, he developed a video game. The lecture series coincided with an exhibit on the author's life and work, the materials for which were sourced from his literary archives, which were on loan to the university library's Special Collections department, making them a unique, "living" archive.