Leo Pleysier has made a literary career from writing about various members of his own family. But in his Radio Books story, the author himself takes centre stage as he floats above the countryside in a hot air balloon.

Leo Pleysier - Ascension Day

Belgian author Leo Pleysier was born in 1945 in Rijkevorsel. a country village near Antwerp where he still resides today. He made his literary debut in 1971 with a collection of short stories. But he first reached a wide audience with his 1989 book ‘Wit is altijd schoon’ (White is Always Nice). A touching tribute to his dead mother, the book was the beginning of a cycle of work in which various family members talk about their lives and the way they deal with their own memories.

He wrote about his sister in ‘De kast’ (The Cupboard), his brother in ‘Zwart van het volk’ (Thick as Flies) and an aunt who was a nun in China in ‘De Gele Rivier is bevrozen’ (The Yellow River is Frozen). The family cycle is rounded off by his 2000 book ‘Volgend jaar in Berchem’ (Next Year in Berchem, 2000), in which the father, a controversial figure of their youth, is discussed at family gatherings and the narrator himself wisely keeps silent in the orchestra of voices. Pleysier has won numerous awards for his work including the Belgian National Prize for Prose.

Landscape and memory

Although Pleysier has written stories set in China, India, Africa and most recently Equador, most of his work takes place in the countryside where he has lived his whole life. Memories of how the landscape once was and how it has changed also play an important role. Landscape and memory are elements of his contribution for Radio Books. The narrator contemplates the past and present while airborne in a hot-air balloon. 

“Now we are flying a bit lower and I have already recognized a couple of the church steeples which rise up out of the landscape here and there. A little bit as it used to be in this far-flung corner of Belgium, when churches and spires were the orientation points, both for the lonely shepherd heading home in the evening with his flock and for the stranger passing through en route to Breda or Den Bosch. Because remember that at that time you were constantly in danger of getting lost in the wilderness of this lonely heather-covered area.”

‘Ascension Day’ by Leo Pleysier was translated by Michael O’Loughlin. The story is read by David Swatling.

The series Radio Books is an initiative of the Flemish-Dutch Huis de Buren in Brussels, in association with the Flemish radio broadcaster Klara and Radio Netherlands Worldwide.