"Forgetting is a strange power, because it makes memory possible. That is why all architecture from the past is something like the music of space, which surrounds us and sends us images that we have c
Shortly before his death, Stefan Hertmans' grandfather Urbain Martien gave his grandson a set of notebooks containing the detailed memories of his life. He grew up in poverty around 1900, the son of a
A brilliant reconstruction of an incredible journey across medieval Europe to Egypt, and an untold story of forbidden love.In the small village in Provence where Stefan Hertmans has made his home, peo
"In this vivid and masterful novel, a Flemish man reconstructs his grandfather's story--his life, loves, and art, all disrupted by the first World War--from the unflinching notebooks he left behind. S
“Potent. . . . Harrowing. . . . Built to last. . . . an uncanny work of historical reconstruction.” —Dwight Garner, The New York TimesThe life of Urban Martien—artist, soldier, survivor of World War I
