Thirty days - Tapa blanda

"Verbeke has written a bold, busy, textured novel, drawing on many elements that often feature in American and British fiction, only she has succeeded at a far higher level. Read it once and you may well read it twice." --Irish Times

"The clever thing about Thirty Days is that the book digs into the psyche of the migrant...The feeling of disorientation that plagues the protagonist grabs a hold of the reader... A novel about a man that tries everything to belong in his community, to integrate, but who never succeeds." -- NRC Next

"Thirty days is the best novel in the Dutch language published this spring. Wise, humoristic, melancholy, profound, socially relevant." -- Knack

"Alphonse and Verbeke see, beyond the hopeful things, the passion behind the damage, the craving behind the hatred, the weak-minded claim to love. A courageous, inspiring and poignant book." -- De Standaard

"Dutch readers voted this their favourite novel of 2015, and Liz Waters's elegant translation conveys the warmth and gentle humour of Alphonse's initial interactions with the local people, the chilly distrust that lurks under the surface and the complexity of his relationship with Cat." --Herald Scotland

"It's a marvellous novel, so full of incident that it seems impossible that all this could happen in only thirty days." --Kate Macdonald

"Verbeke has a wonderful knack of bringing characters vividly to life in a few expertly chosen evocative words... Thought-provoking." --Big Issue

Meet Alphonse. Good, happy - but also funny, observant and imaginative, Alphonse is formerly a musician based in Brussels who has left the city with his girlfriend Kat to live near her parents in the buttoned up rural district of Westhoek. It has open fields, wide, low skies, more World War I graves than almost anywhere in Europe - and one of the highest suicide rates in the western world.

Alphonse starts a new life as a handyman as he paints and decorates the interior of people's homes he gets to know their complex emotional lives their affairs, family disturbances, messy divorces, everyday cruelties, and unexpected dreams.

But when he, Kat and a doctor client help a group of Afghans and Syrians at a makeshift refugee camp, he learns that not all locals appreciate their work...

Humorous, melancholy and wise, this is a deeply moving story about love, outsiders, and the need to belong.