Best of
Belgium

2013

Cross My Heart


Carmen Reid - 2013
    Fifteen-year-old Nicole watches as the Nazis invade Belgium. Determined not to stand by as her country is brought to its knees, Nicole vows to fight back and joins the Belgian Resistance. Under her new alias - Coco - Nicole embarks on a dangerous new life as a spy, where the only question is not if you'll be caught, but when...

My Mother Laughs


Chantal Akerman - 2013
    She flew back from New York to care for her, and between dressing her, feeding her and putting her to bed, she wrote. She wrote about her childhood, the escape her mother made from Auschwitz but didn't talk about, the difficulty of loving her girlfriend, C., her fear of what she would do when her mother did die. Among these imperfectly perfect fragments of writing about her life, she placed stills from her films. My Mother Laughs is both the distillation of the themes Akerman pursued throughout her creative life, and a version of the simplest and most complicated love story of all: that between a mother and a daughter.Translated by Daniella Shreir WIth an Introduction by Eileen Myles and Afterword by Frances Morgan

Rick Steves' Northern European Cruise Ports


Rick Steves - 2013
    As always, he has a plan to help you have a meaningful cultural experience while you're there—even with just a few hours in port.Inside you'll find one-day itineraries for sightseeing at or near the major Northern Europe ports of call, including:Southampton and Dover (London)Le Havre (Paris and Normandy)Zeebrugge (Bruges and Brussels)AmsterdamOsloCopenhagenWarnemünde/Rostock (Berlin)StockholmHelsinkiTallinnSt. PetersburgRick Steves' Northern Europe Cruise Ports explains how to get into town from the cruise terminal, shares sightseeing tips, and includes self-guided walks and tours. You'll learn which destinations are best for an excursion—and which you can confidently visit on your own. You'll also get tips on booking a cruise, plus hints for saving time and money on the ship and in port.You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when cruising through Northern Europe.

War and Turpentine


Stefan Hertmans - 2013
    Stories he’d heard as a child had led Hertmans to suspect that their contents might be disturbing, and for years he didn’t dare to open them.When he finally did, he discovered unexpected secrets. His grandfather’s life was marked by years of childhood poverty in late-nineteenth-century Belgium, by horrific experiences on the frontlines during the First World War and by the loss of the young love of his life. He sublimated his grief in the silence of painting.Drawing on these diary entries, his childhood memories and the stories told within Urbain’s paintings, Hertmans has produced a poetic novelisation of his grandfather’s story, brought to life with great imaginative power and vivid detail.War and Turpentine is an enthralling search for a life that coincided with the tragedy of a century—and a posthumous, almost mythical attempt to give that life a voice at last.

Micha�l Borremans: As Sweet as It Gets


Jeffrey Grove - 2013
    The disparate spaces he imagines in his paintings, drawings, sculptures and films are unified by an uncanny sense of dislocation and an often unsettling beauty. Rendered in complex palettes and exquisite techniques, Borremans' works in all media embrace a rich legacy of artistic progenitors, but remain firmly anchored in the present. Presenting over 100 works created by the artist over a 14-year period in all media, this publication includes many works not previously reproduced in books or catalogues, offering the most complete overview of Borremans' oeuvre to date. Contributions include a concise and incisive overview of Borremans' practice; a revealing, in-depth interview between the main author of the book, Jeffrey Grove, and the artist, addressing process, influence and philosophical and critical issues; as well as more than 50 individual entries and mini-essays on individual works in the artist's oeuvre by notable writers, curators, filmmakers and musicians. Described by the artist as "the mother of all Borremans books," Micha�l Borremans: As Sweet As It Gets is published on the occasion of a major mid-career retrospective.Initially trained in photography and graphic design, the Belgian artist Micha�l Borremans (born 1963) turned to painting at the age of 30. Work by the artist is held in numerous public collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Borremans lives and works in Ghent.

The Well-Laden Ship


Egbert of Liège - 2013
    Compiled by Egbert of Liege, it""was planned as a first reader for beginning students. This makes it one of the few surviving works from the Middle Ages written explicitly for schoolroom use. Most of the content derives from the Bible, especially the wisdom books, from the Church Fathers, and from the ancient poets, notably Vergil, Juvenal, and Horace; but, remarkably, Egbert also included Latin versions of much folklore from the spoken languages. It features early forms of nursery rhymes (for example, "Jack Sprat"), folktales (for instance, various tales connected with Reynard the Fox), and even fairytales (notably "Little Red Riding Hood"). The poem also contains medieval versions of many still popular sayings, such as "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," "When the cat's away, the mice will play," and "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." "The Well-Laden Ship," which survives in a single medieval manuscript, has been edited previously only once (in 1889) and has never been translated. It will fascinate anyone interested in proverbial wisdom, folklore, medieval education, or medieval poetry.