Category Archives: Fiction set in Belgium

Anita Shreve’s Resistance

I didn’t quite know what to expect when I started reading it, but I have to say that Anita Shreve’s novel Resistance (1995) is not half bad. There are things about it I didn’t like, but the truth is that … Continue reading

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Ben Elton’s The First Casualty

Ben Elton’s 2005 novel The First Casualty clearly advertises itself as a World War I novel. The poppy and the faded sepia photograph of soldiers wearing Brodie helmets are as clear indicators as you can get. But it really isn’t a … Continue reading

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Second sight: Ciaran Carson’s Shamrock Tea

Surprisinly enough (or perhaps not), relations between Belgium and Ireland go back a lot further than Ireland’s entry into the EEC in 1973 or than the founding of the Irish College in Leuven in 1607 when Leuven was part of … Continue reading

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Fiction set in Belgium: a very brief overview

Reading Teju Cole’s Open City (2011) the other day – part of which is set in Brussels, where the protagonist arrives shortly after the teenager Joe van Holsbeeck was killed for his MP3 player in the city’s central train station … Continue reading

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