The Ditch

When Robert Walter, popular mayor of Amsterdam, sees his wife toss her head back in laughter while chatting to one of his aldermen at a New Year’s reception, he immediately suspects the worst. Despite their long and happy marriage, Robert is convinced that Sylvia is cheating on him – and with the straitlaced alderman, no less, who is committed to the environment and wants to spoil the capital’s skyline with wind turbines. Soon afterwards, a journalist produces a photograph of a police officer being beaten up by three protesters during a demonstration against the Vietnam war. She claims that the mayor is one of the protesters. Then, out of the blue, Robert’s 94-year-old father turns up on the steps of the city hall, desperate to speak to him. He and his wife want to die together. They do not want to burden their son with their deteriorating health, so why not end their own lives when the time is right?

The Ditch shows a seemingly stable man quickly becoming increasingly entangled in his own fears and suspicions. Or is everything not what it seems, and is Robert Walter actually seeing things clearly the very first time?

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‘Herman Koch shows brilliantly how you can see things that might not be there at all, how your imagination can run away with you. The Ditch is an ode to the imagination.’**** Het Parool

‘The Ditch is another Great Watergraafsmeerian Novel.’*** NRC Handelsblad

‘Herman Koch, the best-selling postwar Dutch writer, shows yet again why he is the master of suspense and open endings.’**** Humo

‘Koch has mastered his métier with effortless superiority. Inventive, deceptively clear and full of friction. A publisher’s promise has rarely been so fully delivered.’**** de Volkskrant

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‘The Ditch is another Great Watergraafsmeerian Novel.’ *** NRC Handelsblad

‘Koch has mastered all the tricks. He is the master of variety, balance and subtle cliff-hangers. [...] Plot-driven is an understatement: Koch cracks the whip to the very end.’ BOEK

‘An excellent thrilling book.’ Blazer (Israel)

‘The book races ahead like an express train, is funny and profound.’ – NRC Next ‘Koch has written a novel full of tense undercurrents, wonderful characters and spot–on observations.’ VERONICA

‘An intelligent, psychologically complex novel, exploring the boundaries of morality.’ STERN

‘Koch's novel is notable not only for its original story but also its style. Every sentence is precise and considered. The writer’s humour is different than usual: he chooses the path of whining, moaning and nagging.’ Provinciale Zeeuwse Courant

‘Koch has outdone himself. His heroine is beautiful, tragic and believable.’ De Groene Amsterdammer

‘A novel both hilarious and poignant that turns everything on its head so often that you end up not knowing which is which: fiction or reality.’ GPD

‘We think Koch is a great writer. A fantastic anthropologist. He knows our quirks and our weaknesses, our desires and our fears, our poses and our hypocrisy. He has an eagle eye for the small, all-revealing gesture. He has the gift of plain language and, perhaps more importantly, the talent to capture the madhouse he believes the world to be and the pointlessness that he sees all around him in prose that almost always surprises and, yes, very often makes you laugh. That is pretty unique.’ De Standaard

‘Should Tom Sanders disregard that advice? Or should he tackle his son about his behaviour? That is the central dilemma in Easy Living, and Koch gets a devilish kick out of making Tom Sanders vacillate between these two options, and gets an even greater kick out of pushing him into a corner.’ Parool

'One of the most moving school novels in Dutch literature.' Vrij Nederland

Even more than a book about memories, this is a book about lost memories and that is the thing that makes this one so special. Trouw

Een spannende roman over de liefde voor een jonge actrice, de verdorven filmwereld en de kunst van het thuisblijven. VPRO