Taproot Press Femke

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.