From Spectral to Real Jews: Recent Trends in Flemish Writing about the Holocaust

This article looks into contemporary Dutch-language prose related to the Holocaust, with a particular focus on two recent bestselling books authored by Flemish writers, namely Jeroen Olyslaegers’s novel Wil [Will, 2016] and Margot Vanderstraeten’s literary reportage Mazzel tov. Mijn leven als werkstudente bij een Orthodox-joodse familie [Mazel Tov. The Story of My Extraordinary Friendship with an Orthodox Jewish Family, 2017]. After sketching out the specificity of Flemish Holocaust representation and memory within the broader context of Dutch-language literary and cultural production, the article concentrates on the diverging ways in which the two Antwerp-set books under discussion thematize the presence of a significant Jewish community in the largest city of Flanders as well as its profound historical entanglement in the Holocaust. As will be argued, not only do these two books represent a new stage – or at least a new quality – in the Flemish literary engagement with the Shoah, they also nicely complement each other in terms of narrative approach and in terms of historical scope.