Author and journalist Marja Pruis has written three novels about the intimate relationships women have with their lovers, mothers or careers. A woman also takes centre stage in her story for Radio Books.

Marja Pruis - 'A Woman of Principles'

Born in Amsterdam in 1959, Marja Pruis studied Dutch and languages at the University of Amsterdam. After graduation she wrote about art and literature for the newspaper De Groene Amsterdammer, where she is now an editor.

Inspired by American journalist Janet Malcolm’s book about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, in 1999 Pruis published her own literary investigation into the lives of Dutch writer A.H. Nijhoff and her husband, poet Martinus Nijhoff, who lived a bohemian lifestyle in the first half of the 20th century. She followed this with her first novel ‘Bloem’ (Bloom) in 2002, an impressionistic and experimental story about sex and lust.

Intimate Relationships

Her second novel ‘De Vertrouweling’ (The Confidant) was nominated for both the AKO Literature Prize and the Anna Bijns Prize. The story revolved around the intimate relationships between women and men, mothers and daughters and close friends. Her latest novel ‘Atoomgeheimen’ (Nuclear Secrets) is a literary thriller about a successful designer of lingerie. She meets a school friend who is now a pole dancer while on vacation in the Caribbean.

In her contribution for Radio Books, the past intersects with the present when a young woman travels with her lover to Venice. This is the city where her mother left her family years ago. Memories are stirred as the woman wonders whether she should try to reconnect with her long lost mother.

“You still don’t care much for pizza. For you, twenty years later, the taste of melted cheese and tomato still instantly evokes an intense sense of loss. That look in your mother’s eyes as she looked at you over her virtually untouched pizza, before she supposedly went off to the bank around the corner to get some money - you wouldn’t see that look again until three years later on your grandfather’s face the evening before he died. A look somewhere between despair and resignation.”

‘A Woman of Principles’ by Marja Pruis was translated by John Nieuwenhuizen. The story is read by Jacky Spears.

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.