very happy to have some of my journalism published in Dutch for the first time, featuring the latest issue of the respected Terras magazine. The magazine was founded by erik lindner and the article emerged from a commission for European Lliterature Night Amsterdam, thanks to the British council.
The full Dutch can be read here http://tijdschriftterras.nl/thuis-2/ and it was translated by Anne Tjerk Popkema
"Het zijn onze vormende jaren op deze aarde die bepalen hoe we ‘thuis’ opvatten. Of het nu de plek is waar onze wieg toevallig stond, de plaats waar we opgroeiden of waar onze ouders vandaan komen: de omgeving van onze jeugdjaren vormt ons thuis. Althans, dat zeggen ze."
... and from the essay in English, an excerpt"I have always been distrustful of those who speak of home, actively, keenly, when they are young. Those who stay in the same town in which they were born. Home then becomes a word equivalent to repression, a soft claw coming up out of a bungalow, wrapping itself across my mouth.
London is my home, because I have no home. London is the world. As angry and lovely and populous as our world. As the population of our planet has doubled so London has become the biggest it has ever been, just recently catching the population of the pre-war era. I am one of these millions, delighted, against where I was raised, to be amongst the people of the world. I am home, briefly, with those I love, in a city which is not celebrated enough for being truly global, where I have never seen people in conflict because they are from different homes. Because everyone is from a different home here, almost no home is home when in London. So it is all of ours. Does this paradox qualify? Perhaps not, it cannot be a paradox if I say it is my home."
