Dimitri Verhulst

Several years ago, out of the blue, Dimitri Verhulst began writing a diary he could not share with anyone. Reports from the Void is an account of self-annihilation: better to run yourself into the ground than let someone else cut you down. Fear of the moment when his own life will be snuffed out triggers a lonely trek from one bar, drug dealer and empty hotel room to the next. He flees down every back alley he can, until we arrive at the root of his fear. Even his diary turns out to be an escape, though he only sees this after the fact. Reports from the Void is a harrowingly honest book in the tradition of Jeroen Brouwers, Charles Bukowski and Bohumil Hrabal and lays bare a writer as he does not want to be seen. But above all, this diary is a declaration of love to Tutut.

Everyone is good at something and in Mattis’s case, it’s being alone! Weary of mankind, he champions solitude and lives on a remote lake, where he suppresses his virility with booze, smokes like a crematorium and eats freezer meals because his stomach demands to be fed now and then. A thinker of dark thoughts with a waning belief in everything, including jazz and chess. But after too long without the clatter of civilization, he even doubts his abilities as a misanthropic loner, and considers returning to a life surrounded by parking meters in a town full of easy emptiness. Maybe it’s not true that everyone is good at something. Then a woman appears on the scene. Stung by unexpected love, he recalibrates his ambitions.