Lize Spit

Lize Spit was born in 1988 in Viersel, a small village near Antwerp in Flanders, Belgium, where she also grew up. She studied screenwriting at the Hoger Rijks Instituut voor Toneel en Cultuurspreiding (RITCS) of the Erasmushogeschool in Brussels, first publishing prose and poetry in magazines and newspapers, such as »Tirade«, »Het liegend konijn« and »De Gids«. In 2013, her narrative »ordehandhaver« (tr. Marshal) won both the jury prize and the public vote prize in the prestigious »Write Now!« writing competition.

Her debut novel, »Het smelt« (Eng. »The Melting«, forthcoming) was published by a relatively new Amsterdam publishing company called Das Mag in 2016. The novel has been compared to »The Catcher in the Rye« and tells the story of a young woman returning to her home village after 13 years. She spent all that time trying to forget what had happened in her past and never looked back – until her two oldest friends invited her for a visit. Suddenly, it all comes flooding back: the noose that her father showed her in the shed; her drunken mother, whom she had to pick up from the village festival in a wheelbarrow; and the summer she was betrayed by her friends. Lize Spit delicately switches between past and present and with storytelling genius. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that her protagonist has returned to wreak revenge. Her unhappy childhood with a neurotic sister, dominating father, and feeble mother is described with great empathy on Spit’s part. She takes the reader on an unsettling journey through the brutal naivety of youth. »De Standaard« writes, »This novel is a bomb, which at first just casts a dark shadow but then explodes with cold-blooded precision.« It featured in the best-seller lists in the Netherlands and in Belgium, the translation rights have been sold in eight countries and the movie rights were acquired by a Belgian production company.

Lize Spit has been awarded the »Bronzen Uil« for the best debut novel and the Dutch National Bookseller Award, among others. She regularly appears on talk shows and writes columns for the daily newspaper »De Morgen«. She also teaches screenwriting and is a guest lecturer at the LUCA School of Arts in Brussels, where she lives.

Und es schmilzt

S. Fischer

Frankfurt a. M., 2017

[Ü: Helga van Beuningen]