Arnon Grunberg

Arnon Yasha Yves Grunberg (; 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.Blauwe maandagen
(in Dutch). 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)''.Karin de Mik,
'Van der Jagt is pseudoniem van Grunberg'
(in Dutch), ''NRC Handelsblad'', 2000. Retrieved 18 April 2014.

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.Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature
/ref> This book has been translated into fourteen languages and has received critical acclaim in the New York Times, LA 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