The Ditch

When Robert Walter, popular mayor of Amsterdam, sees his wife toss her head back in laughter while chatting to one of his aldermen at a New Year’s reception, he immediately suspects the worst. Despite their long and happy marriage, Robert is convinced that Sylvia is cheating on him – and with the straitlaced alderman, no less, who is committed to the environment and wants to spoil the capital’s skyline with wind turbines. Soon afterwards, a journalist produces a photograph of a police officer being beaten up by three protesters during a demonstration against the Vietnam war. She claims that the mayor is one of the protesters. Then, out of the blue, Robert’s 94-year-old father turns up on the steps of the city hall, desperate to speak to him. He and his wife want to die together. They do not want to burden their son with their deteriorating health, so why not end their own lives when the time is right?

The Ditch shows a seemingly stable man quickly becoming increasingly entangled in his own fears and suspicions. Or is everything not what it seems, and is Robert Walter actually seeing things clearly the very first time?

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‘Herman Koch shows brilliantly how you can see things that might not be there at all, how your imagination can run away with you. The Ditch is an ode to the imagination.’**** Het Parool

‘The Ditch is another Great Watergraafsmeerian Novel.’*** NRC Handelsblad

‘Herman Koch, the best-selling postwar Dutch writer, shows yet again why he is the master of suspense and open endings.’**** Humo

‘Koch has mastered his métier with effortless superiority. Inventive, deceptively clear and full of friction. A publisher’s promise has rarely been so fully delivered.’**** de Volkskrant

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‘Koch has mastered his métier with effortless superiority. Inventive, deceptively clear and full of friction. A publisher’s promise has rarely been so fully delivered.’ **** de Volkskrant

‘Dear Mr M. fulfills the promise of a long-awaited new Koch after only a few pages.’ VRIJ NEDERLAND

‘A novel that has become a moral question around the world.’ La Repubblica (Italy)

‘Summer House with Swimming Pool is a story ingeniously told, in which Koch turns the spotlight of his imagination in deliciously cynical fashion on the world of medicine and of Famous Dutch People.’ HET PAROOL

‘An intelligent, psychologically complex novel, exploring the boundaries of morality.’ STERN

‘Koch has outdone himself. His heroine is beautiful, tragic and believable.’ De Groene Amsterdammer

‘The story unfolds from one powerful scene to the next, from one penetrating image to another.’ Vrij Nederland

to merciful and back again.’ De Morgen ‘I cannot think of another Dutch writer who can get so entertainingly, so refreshingly worked up - without ever becoming bitter or cynical.’ HP/De Tijd

‘From the second line, “You must have heard of me”, you wish him the worst.’ de Volkskrant

'One of the most moving school novels in Dutch literature.' Vrij Nederland

Even more than a book about memories, this is a book about lost memories and that is the thing that makes this one so special. Trouw

Een geslaagde roman over de complexe menselijke natuur. Margriet