Author talk - Jacqueline Zirkzee
- bcconvention2025
- Feb 3
- 2 min read
Bookcrossing is all about books on the move, but what moves the writer? On the first full day of the Bookcrossing Convention, we will have the opportunity to find out. From prehistory to the (near) future, Dutch novelist Jacqueline Zirkzee moves through time and space to find her subjects.
Some authors write variations on the same story all their life, but she is not one of them. Her (Dutch) Wikipedia page says that – among other things – her latest novel ‘SALOMON’ explores the fine line between justice and injustice. ‘SALOMON’ is her most recent book, a dystopian novel about an organization called SALOMON. This organization enforces a strict policy regarding children and parents. The story reflects the growing trend of governments increasingly intervening in private matters, particularly when children are involved.
Although the subject is quite different, you will find the same theme of justice versus injustice in her novel ‘Het Heksenhuis’, named after the infamous Witches’ House in Bamberg, a seventeenth-century prison for those believed to have dabbled in witchcraft, as well as in the novel ‘Reimer’, part of which deals with crimes against humanity committed by the early Dutch East India Company.
There is much to be said about these subjects and how they can inspire a novelist.
An English translation of ‘SALOMON’ is expected to be released by the end of 2025. For those who would like to read something by Jacqueline Zirkzee today, there is an e-book available in the Kindle Store: ‘The Book of Isolde’. It is a translation of ‘Het Boek van Tristan en Isolde’, which retells the classic Celtic tragedy from the perspective of the woman. It is one of her earlier novels (2004), yet a hint of the havoc authorities can wreak on someone’s personal life is already present.
More about Jacqueline Zirkzee:
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