De Messias (novel)

Julian Winter The Messiah When Dutch wood expert Emma Faber, having accepted a new chair at the university in Berlin, takes on a research project, the dating of a violin, she unknowingly sets foot in a world where greed and perverted power rule. Love for eternal beauty, belief in the objectivity of science and admiration for geniality turn out to be based on lying and cheating, fake and fraud. During her thrilling quest for truth, she discovers that the mantra of modern science, counting is knowledge, offers no solution at all. Her journey takes her to Geneva, Oxford and Los Angeles, but also back to her harsh religious upbringing in Amsterdam. Emma’s story is exemplary of the confusion of ‘modern man in these modern times’, but the history of Stradivari and his successors, closely interlaced with her adventures, shows that in all this time not much has changed. The period between the ‘Genius from Cremona’ and Emma is teeming with criminal benefactors, fraudulent experts and swindling professionals. The Messiah is a historical show-box, a dazzling journey through space and time, wildly exciting and stunning at the same time. ●

Breathtaking, layered novel in the tradition of Umberto Eco DETAILS Cover Tessa van der Waals Edition Paper back Dimensions 13.7 x 21.3 cm Content ca. 352 pages Price € 19.95

ISBN 978 90 446 2746 6 ISBN E-BOOK 978 90 446 2747 3 NUR 301 APPEARS September 2015 Julian Winter is the pen name of Wiljan van den Akker and Esther Jansma. The Messiah is their first novel together. They have also translated and published two volumes of poetry of the American poet Mark Strand.

PROMOTION • Radio appearances • Interviews

"Everywhere and always wrinkles are being smoothened, folds removed, grooves filled. However spiky irregular the surface, after some time it will be leveled, polished, brushed away, licked clean, torn down.”

Author of nine volumes of poetry, and several collections of essays and stories, Esther Jansma (1958) is considered one of the major Dutch poets and writers. She has received important literary prizes like the VSB Poetry Prize, the Roland Holst Stipend, the Jan Campert Prize and the C.C.S. Crone Prize. In 2008 Bloodaxe Books (UK) published an anthology of her poetry under the title What it is. Wiljan van den Akker (1954) holds a distinguished chair in modern poetry at Utrecht University. After being Dean of Humanities for almost nine years, he is now Vice-Rector for Research. He is also a poet of two volumes, one of which received the C. Buddingh’ Prize. Together with Gillis Dorleijn he is working on a history of modern Dutch poetry.

• Reviews • Social-media actions

Media attenti on

Translated from and styled according to http://www.uitgeverijprometheus.nl/downloads/2015zomer/prometheus_zomer2015.pdf, pages 22-25.

A conversation with Julian Winter The Messiah is a wildly exciting book, partly based on reality: the swindle involving old violins. How big an issue is this? You only have to check the internet on 'Violin + Fraud' and you will get a tsunami of hits. Millions of dollars are involved. The violin trade is a line of business in which all cover up for one another as everyone wants a piece of the cake: greedy traders, fraudulent appraisers, vain benefactors, guileless violinists. Those who sell the instruments often are the same as those who write the certificates of authenticity. Appraisers want a Stradivari to be real, because they often receive their - sometimes huge - commission based on the value of the instrument at the time. Investors buy ‘authentic’ violins and then present themselves as benefactors: they donate the instrument to a charitable institution, like a museum, and through income tax they get half of the appraised value back from the government. That value suddenly has become ten times higher as the original price they paid. The money comes pouring in. And then there are the young, talented violinists, for whom it is impossible to buy such a precious instrument. They are dependent on the benefactor who ‘out of love for the arts’ gives the violin on loan. In the meantime, their careers get a boost because they play a Stradivari. So it is no wonder that many famous violins have false labels. And because so many parties are involved financially, many cases are settled out of court. Which means there are hardly any court verdicts like ‘false’ or ‘real’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

If the label in the Messiah is real and Stradivari indeed built this violin in 1716, then it is worth many millions. It would almost be priceless, because it is considered the gold standard in the violin world. But suppose it is not real, then mayhem will ensue. If it is a nineteenthcentury copy, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where it is now displayed in a glass box, will lose its jewel in one blow. Moreover, the trade in old violins will collapse, for everybody will start doubting all the other old instruments. Gluing false labels is a piece of cake, believe us; they already knew that in the seventeenth century. Why is the Stradivari in your book called ‘the Messiah’? For centuries this world-famous violin has been shrouded in mystery. In the nineteenth century it was owned by a dealer who always bragged about its heavenly beauty, but never wanted to show it. “So, your violin is like the Messiah,” a famous violinist said, “always expected, but it never appears.” Some seventy years ago powerful London dealers donated the violin to the Ashmolean, but on the strict condition that nobody was allowed to play it. Odd, because specialists always claim that old violins should be played. That’s when one begins to think: wait a minute, maybe it does not sound that good, or, worse: maybe it is not authentic at all? Experts began to have doubts, too, because the violin looks immaculate, as if it was varnished yesterday. At the same time, the

Ultimately, this book also is about insecurity and survival

Messiah stands for the ultimate Stradivari, admired worldwide and copied by the thousands. Besides the protagonist Emma Faber, your book the Messiah also has another, most remarkable character: wood! How did you hit on the idea of giving wood a voice? Through Emma’s story, we wanted to weave pieces of history. A striking example is that Stradivari was not only an outstanding violin maker, but also the owner of a small factory, a proficient usurer and speculator. Someone who willingly let his competitors go bankrupt. That dark side of his character is systematically covered up by the notion of ‘the genius’. To tell the story of Stradivari and his heritage, we needed one central character. So that became ‘wood’, one time speaking as a walking-cane, the other time as a pew. We had tremendous fun with it during the writing of the book. The voice of ‘wood’ guides you through history to the present, via the nineteenth century, when master builder Vuillaume had the famous violin in his possession and began making numerous copies of it. This voice of wood was a playful way to

create more coherence. Ultimately, this book also is about uncertainty and survival. Uprooted Emma Faber arrives in Berlin and has a hard time building a new life almost from scratch. At the end of the novel, it becomes clear how her story ties in with the historic tale, which starts in 1631 in Cremona, when the plague has left the city tortured and molested. Can you tell us something about the process of writing together? Neither of us could have written this book alone. First, we figured out plot, structure and characters together. Not too elaborate, because real brain waves come during the process of writing. Then we separately made a concept of a chapter that the other one - often mercilessly - rewrote. Next, the first picked up the chapter once more and started rewriting again, until we both thought it was good. Ultimately, the reader should not see ‘two hands’. Now we don’t even remember who wrote the first draft of a chapter. And that doesn’t matter, because the sum has become more than the parts. If you call the parts Wiljan van den Akker and Esther Jansma, the sum is called Julian Winter. It is Julian Winter who wrote The Messiah, nobody else. ●

Translated from and styled according to http://www.uitgeverijprometheus.nl/downloads/2015zomer/prometheus_zomer2015.pdf, pages 22-25.