Stammered Songbook

Erwin Mortier (1965) (pronounced "More-tyee") spent his childhood in the village of Nevele, in the vicinity of his native city of Ghent. After graduating in the history of the arts and archaeology, he worked as scientific assistant in the Dr Guislain Museum for the history of Psychiatry. Mortier made his mark as a writer in 1999 with his debut novel Marcel , which won several prizes and was nominated for the most distinguished Flemish and Dutch literary awards. His subsequent novels My Fellow Skin (2000) and Shutterspeed (2002) and the novella All Days Together (2004) quickly established his reputation as one of the leading authors of his generation. For While the Gods Were Sleeping (2008), a novel set against the backdrop of the First World War, he was awarded the prestigious AKO Literature Prize 2009. A consummate stylist, he offers evocative descriptions that bring past worlds brilliantly to life.
Paul Vincent, from the Dutch. Paul Vincent taught Dutch at the University of London for over 20 years before becoming a full-time translator. He has translated a wide variety of titles by Louis Couperus and J.J. Slauerhoff for Pushkin Press. In 2012 he was awarded the Vondel Translation Prize.

"Few memoirs approach the beauty of this strange, angry and quite astonishing account of a mother's tragic passage at 65 into dementia. Although he is a celebrated novelist, nothing else that I have read by this Dutch-language Belgian writer compares to it. The writing is simply extraordinary: exact, tender and very real in describing the disintegration of the forthright woman he once knew." -- The Irish Times (A Nonfiction Best Book of the Year)

'It makes no difference what subject Erwin Mortier settles upon. Everything he describes gains that characteristic splendour, that unmistakable, unique sound. Golden tragedy' - Opzij

'In this painfully beautiful novel it is ultimately love that persists despite everything, the love of a son for his mother. Heart-rending' - de Telegraaf

'Erwin Mortier captures his mother's dementia in sensitive and elegant prose. The splendid sentences with which he frames her deterioration throw it into unexpectedly stark relief' - Trouw

'A wonderful source of sustenance to survive the shipwreck' - Libération

'Erwin Mortier has surpassed himself. This is more than just an immensely touching confessional memoir about Alzheimer's disease. It is an essential book. Overwhelming. Mortier unearths at least one diamond on every page' - De Standaard

'Superb, staggering and even more... At once a clinical observation, a cry of love, a farewell and a meditation. A work of considerable significance' - Humanite