The directory «Plots»

Lanoye Tom Emiel Gerardine Aloïs Lanoye
(b. 1958)

Tom Lanoye is a Belgian novelist and poet who works in Antwerp (Belgium) and Cape Town (South Africa). He gained widespread popularity in the early 1980s as part of the new generation of young Flemish novelists that included Herman Brusselmans and Kristien Hemmerechts. He is one of the most versatile and lauded authors of his generation, including outside the Dutch language area.

From 1981 he was part of a duo together with James Bordello, who called themselves ‘the Two Last Great Poetic Talents From Just Before The Third World War'. They published their own booklets, and within a year they had progressed from unannounced performances in student bars in Ghent to an appearance at the ‘Night of Poetry’ in Utrecht. Lanoye also wrote polemical pieces for journals such as 'De Zwijger', 'Propria Cures' and 'Humo'.

In 1985 Lanoye’s prose debut was published, a collection of stories under the title Een slagerszoon met een brilletje (‘A butcher's son with glasses'). A guest appearance in the same year on the Sonja Barend television chat show brought the breakthrough among the public at large. Following the success of Ten Oorlog! (‘War of the Roses’), his epic – twelve hour-long – adaptation of eight Shakespeare plays, he also became one of the most in-demand writers of contemporary drama in Germany. His work has been published or performed in more than ten languages. Other highlights from his oeuvre include the melancholy novel Kartonnen dozen ('Cardboard boxes'), as well as Het Goddelijke Monster (‘The divine monster’), which together with Zwarte tranen ('Black tears') and Boze tongen (‘Angry tongues’) forms the ultimate trilogy on the disintegrating heart of Europe that is Belgium. This trilogy will shortly be filmed by the Flemish state broadcaster 'één' as a ten-part TV series.

Lanoye has grown from an enfant terrible into an established talent in all forms of texts and writing, for books, newspapers, magazines and other printed matter, as well as for plays, cabaret and performances of song, all in the widest variety of forms and in the broadest sense of the word (adapted quote from the articles of association of the public company limited by shares L.A.N.O.Y.E., incorporated in 1992).

In 2005 Lanoye was voted number 84 in the Flemish version of 'The Greatest Belgian' ('De Grootste Belg').

There is hardly a genre in which he has not produced at least one important work, whether it be a novel, poetry, columns, essays, short stories or theatre. He is also well-known for the lively and theatrical way in which he 'performs' his own work, touring from the theatre to theatre with his 'literary shows', as if they were more theatrical monologues than readings. Then there is the bestseller The third marriage (Het derde huwelijk), the internationally staged plays La Forteresse Europe, Mamma Medea (a free adaptation of Euripides), Mefisto for Ever (adapting Klaus Mann’s novel Mephisto) and Atropa. The Vengeance of Peace (Atropa. De wraak van de vrede) (a free adaptation of Euripides, Aischylos which also incorporates speeches by George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Curzio Malaparte). The two latter works mark the first and third parts of The Tryptichon of Power (De triptiek van de macht) from director Guy Cassiers. Both productions were invited to the Festival d’Avignon, where they were among the main attractions.

In 2007 he was nominated for the De Gouden Uil award and the Libris Literatuur Prijs literature prize for his novel The third marriage (Het derde huwelijk). In the same year he won the Gouden Ganzenveer prize in the Netherlands for his oeuvre.

His long-awaited novel Speechless (Sprakeloos) was published at the end of 2009. It deals with the death of his mother-an amateur actress who loses the power of speech following a stroke. Speechless can be read as an unexpected sequel, with a gap of 18 years, to the equally autobiographical Cardboard boxes (Kartonnen dozen). The novel has received a great deal of praise.

Belgium, 2009, Literature of Belgium