Dutch and Flemish Prose of the Early Twenty-First Century

When the twin towers came crashing down on 11 September 2001, so did the post-modern belief in the end of the ‘grand narratives’, which had all but dominated Dutch and Flemish literature in the 1990s. Or so it seemed. The era-changing event certainly brought about a new sense of historical awareness, provoking novels that grappled with the hubris of the preceding decade. If one ventured to come up with an over-arching theme for a decade and a half worth of literary fiction, it would probably be the dramatic attempt to bridge the gap between the harsh reality and our creative, yet inadequate imagination.