Nach den Briten und den Deutschen haben sich unsere Nachbarn aus den Niederlanden im Rahmen einer großen Umfrage und dazugehörigen Fernsehshow entschlossen, den Herr der Ringe des Oxforder Professors zum beliebtesten fremdsprachlichen Buch der Niederlande zu küren. Ebenso wie in Deutschland und Großbritannien stürzte sich die Öffentlichkeit auf die verheerende Aussage des Wahlergebnisses: können wir die Jugend noch vor solchem literarischen Trash retten? Genau wie in Großbritannien und unserer Republik hat das literarische Establishment immer noch nicht verstanden, was eigentlich gelesen wird — und was wirklich gut ist.

Unsere Freunde bei der niederländischen Schwestergesellschaft haben sich natürlich sehr gefreut und uns folgenden Text auf englisch zukommen lassen. Wer lieber das niederländische Original lesen möchte, der sei auf die Presseerklärung auf der offiziellen Internetseite von Unquendor verwiesen. Wir gratulieren der niederländischen Öffentlichkeit zum guten Geschmack

* Reading public in The Netherlands select The Lord of the Rings as the best foreign book *

Following the examples of Britain and Germany, the Dutch reading public have now selected The Lord of the Rings as the best book. Or rather, as the best foreign prose fiction of all time, a separate poll for the best Dutch prose fiction of all time having taken place last year.

As last year, the poll was organised by Dutch public television and one of the top quality newspapers in The Netherlands (NRC Handelsblad). During the time the poll ran (about three months), The Dutch Tolkien Society Unquendor has mounted a small campaign on the internet in support of The Lord of the Rings, which figured first on the longlist of 300 books, and then on the shortlist of ten.

The result was announced on television on Monday, March 10, as part of a panel quiz on literature, ›The Night of the Book‹, to coincide with the start of the Week of the Book, an annual event organised by the book trade in The Netherlands. Unquendor was invited to send a delegation as part of the studio public when the programme was recorded last Friday — so we had to sit on the news for three days! We were clearly the only group visible as rooting for one of the ten shortlisted books, our corner of the studio being full of copies of The Lord of the Rings that our members had brought.

On top of this, our founder member Renée Vink was invited to form part of the panel, which consisted of six authors (five Dutch and one Flemish) and two members of the reading public selected through the polling process. In the second round of the poll, in which the winning book was selected from a shortlist of ten, based on the first round votes, voters could exercise a quintuple vote by submitting a mini-review of between 1500 and 2500 characters. The two ›readers‹ in the panel, Renée Vink one of them, were selected from those who had written the best reviews.

The following is quoted from the press release the Dutch Tolkien Society Unquendor has distributed (in Dutch) immediately after the programme was broadcast.

»The Lord of the Rings appears to be in the first place ›the people’s choice’. All too often established literary circles voice the opinion that Tolkien’s magnum opus cannot be considered part of (serious) literature. However, The Lord of the Rings has been an immensly popular and valued book worldwide for decades. The Netherlands form no exception to this. Happily, this large reading public turns out to have some influence! The power of this book is recognised by many. In a review on February 28 in NRC Handelsblad newspaper, Maarten van Rossem*) described The Lord of the Rings as, among other things, an extremely clever story about death and failure. It has also been said that the present success of the book is mainly due to it having been turned in to movies in recent years. But we rather think it’s the popularity of the book that has made Peter Jackson’s movies possible at first and then successful.

Unquendor will continue to exert itself to bring the work of J.R.R. Tolkien to the attention of the public at large and that of the literary establishment. The next installment will come on March 22 and 29, 2008, when we will again organise our Tolkien Reading Days in cooperation with several bookstores in four cities in the Netherlands.«

*) Maarten van Rossem is a full professor of history, specializing in history and politics of the United States. He is well known as a commentator of U.S. and international politics on television and in newspapers. These days he appears on television frequently in programmes on the US presidential elections. His review was part of a series of reviews of the shortlisted books by public persons in The Netherlands. He was actually suggested by Unquendor as a suitable reviewer to the editor co-organizing the poll.

Quelle: Unquendor.nl
Quelle: Het beste buitenlandse boek.nl

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