Alma Mathijsen
EN
NL
NL
Alma Mathijsen (1984) wrote five novels, a novella and a collection of short stories. Her work has been translated in several languages, and has been nominated for the BNG Bank Literatuurprijs and the Libris Literatuurprijs. Her latest book Onderland deals with the imaginary world that children construct after they have suffered sexual assault.
︎︎︎Alma’s website
︎︎︎You can read an extract from Alma’s novel Forget the girls here.
︎︎︎Alma’s website
︎︎︎You can read an extract from Alma’s novel Forget the girls here.
‘’It is a relief to come together with artists who have the same background and to see how they translate their trauma into new wonderful works. ‘’
Onderland
All the members of SAAC have created a innerworld for themselves in which they can hide when the world becomes too hard. I became mesmerized by these beautifully constructed thought up places and decided that I wanted to write a novel about it. Along with the book, I made drawings of the people who appear in Onderland.
There’s a land that only reveals itself to people who know what abuse is. Here, monsters from the past live together with their prey. Nightmares roam freely through this strange realm where nothing remains hidden. One day Harper also ends up in Onderland, where everyone has found a way to survive. Harper has no idea yet how to approach that. As her body and her mind split further and further apart, she can no longer deny her own past.
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No one can convince me to leave. I’m staying.
We call it underland. There is no fixed shape, the area changes with the mood of its residents. This place opened up to me the moment I saw myself disappear. Or rather, I saw the coherence disappear. This happens very slowly at first, so slowly that doubt arises as to whether it is happening at all, and then suddenly becomes fast and inescapable. My head and my body no longer spoke to each other.
It happened on a Tuesday evening. The eyes of the boy crawling on top of me were too close together. While I was locked up in this old memory for the umpteenth time, I fell through the sheets, behind the springs of my mattress, through the foam rubber, along the legs of my bed, which were much longer than before. There seemed to be no end to the decline. It was dark. Until I realized that I had squeezed my eyes shut. I was afraid and excited at the same time.
I have found something that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Here we dare to look straight at the atrocities of the past, all monsters from former times live together with their prey, no one is afraid anymore of what has happened to us. The people who are broken, who build a new person from fragments, skin and blood, have gathered in a country that remains hidden from anyone who has not experienced the same. I found it at the time when I had nowhere else to go. Everything in underland is good, there is nothing and no one here that opposes me.
I'm here and I'm never leaving.
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There’s a land that only reveals itself to people who know what abuse is. Here, monsters from the past live together with their prey. Nightmares roam freely through this strange realm where nothing remains hidden. One day Harper also ends up in Onderland, where everyone has found a way to survive. Harper has no idea yet how to approach that. As her body and her mind split further and further apart, she can no longer deny her own past.
Excerpt Onderland
No one can convince me to leave. I’m staying.
We call it underland. There is no fixed shape, the area changes with the mood of its residents. This place opened up to me the moment I saw myself disappear. Or rather, I saw the coherence disappear. This happens very slowly at first, so slowly that doubt arises as to whether it is happening at all, and then suddenly becomes fast and inescapable. My head and my body no longer spoke to each other.
It happened on a Tuesday evening. The eyes of the boy crawling on top of me were too close together. While I was locked up in this old memory for the umpteenth time, I fell through the sheets, behind the springs of my mattress, through the foam rubber, along the legs of my bed, which were much longer than before. There seemed to be no end to the decline. It was dark. Until I realized that I had squeezed my eyes shut. I was afraid and excited at the same time.
I have found something that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Here we dare to look straight at the atrocities of the past, all monsters from former times live together with their prey, no one is afraid anymore of what has happened to us. The people who are broken, who build a new person from fragments, skin and blood, have gathered in a country that remains hidden from anyone who has not experienced the same. I found it at the time when I had nowhere else to go. Everything in underland is good, there is nothing and no one here that opposes me.
I'm here and I'm never leaving.
