de stille stad

Film edition

QUOTE: “Threes Anna is a true master in the description of small and big disappointments” **** Janet Luis

Threes Anna shows with poetical and deadly accuracy how fishes die when you stab your knife into them, how fast the light in their eyes extinguishes when you lift them out of the water, how lonely one can be in a city with over a million inhabitants

For the novel I did a extensive RESEARCH in Tokio.

A young, Western woman succeeds to get allowance for doing an apprenticeship with a world famous chef, who manages a laureate fish restaurant in a big Asian city. Obviously she’s hoping to pick up the “secrets” of the master. However, she isn’t put to work in the kitchen, but in a room where the fish is being cleaned and where she’s being thrown on her own resources. Week after week she’s silently cutting dead fishes, for as long she isn’t able to pick up the language nor the way of thinking of her master cook, the only thing she can do is imitate. As she decides to earn some extra money in the evenings, the lack of communication, the precarious position in the “kitchen” and the inner conversations she has, begin to play tricks on her.

ISBN: 90 214 5025 9

2006 and 2007 (Publishing House Querido, Amsterdam)
2012 revised version published by Signatuur