Jan Vantoortelboom

Jan Vantoortelboom

The journey of a sensitive war-time school teacher from the classroom to a firing squad.

Jan Vantoortelboom’s debut novel, De verzonken jongen, was an instant bestseller in his native Netherlands and won The Bronze Owl 2011, the Award for Literature West Flanders 2012, and was on the shortlist for the Zeeland Book Award 2011. His Name Is David was also a Dutch-language bestseller, is Vantoortelboom’s second novel and his first to be translated in to English.

Translated by Vivien D Glass, His Name is David starts in Flanders, 1914. David, a young Belgian schoolteacher stands before the firing squad, sentenced to death as a deserter. Days before, he’d been teaching his fellow soldiers in the trenches to read and write and dreaming of a forbidden love back in Elverdinge, the Flemish village where he’d worked as a teacher. Despite family tragedy, squalid surroundings, the rigid mindsets of the villagers, and the malign influence of the Catholic Church David tries to create something beautiful. But when he befriends a sensitive young pupil disaster follows. Is there hope for love, tenderness and beauty in the face of brutality and war?

Labelled ‘a book to be unashamedly excited about’ by popular Netherlands daily, NRC Handelsblad.