Femke Hardback

Walking turn-of-the-century Amsterdam with her loyal dog Bibi, Femke is many things: a drifter who spends much of her time in a drug-ridden park; a daughter of the colonial Dutch; a magnetic personality prone to petit mal seizures and destructive relationships; a liar.

This is her story. After being drawn into the unsettling world of a British filmmaker and his wife, she meets and befriends an ageing poet, Michiel de Koning, and tries to nurse him back to health.

As their friendship develops, De Koning's mysterious past - involving the poet and murderer Gerrit Achterberg - leads Femke on a journey to discover the identity of De Koning's great love and inspiration, 'M'.

This pursuit of the truth reveals the uncertainties of her own past in a world of unreliable listeners. Written with a clear poetic sensibility and strong echoes of European Modernism, Femke is a celebration of the stories we tell ourselves and one another, the elusiveness of our fleeting connections, and the complex power dynamics between poet and muse.