Stammered Songbook ― A Mother's Book of Hours

'What makes me saddest, is the double silence of her being. Language has packed its bags and jumped over the railing of the capsizing ship, but there is also another silence in her or around her. I can no longer hear the music of her soul.'
One day, the author's mother no longer remembers the word for 'book'. This seemingly innocuous moment of distraction is the first sign of the slow disintegration of her mind.

As Alzheimer's disease sets in and language increasingly escapes her, her son attempts to gather the fragments of what she has become, writing a moving, loving chronicle of the gradual descent into dementia of someone who 'no longer knows who she is, where she is or what will happen'.

Erwin Mortier (1965) (pronounced "More-tyee") spent his childhood in the village of Nevele, in the vicinity of his native city of Ghent. After graduating in the history of the arts and archaeology, he worked as scientific assistant in the Dr Guislain Museum for the history of Psychiatry. Mortier made his mark as a writer in 1999 with his debut novelMarcel, which won several prizes and was nominated for the most distinguished Flemish and Dutch literary awards. His subsequent novelsMy Fellow Skin (2000) and Shutterspeed (2002) and the novella All Days Together (2004) quickly established his reputation as one of the leading authors of his generation. ForWhile the Gods Were Sleeping (2008), a novel set against the backdrop of the First World War, he was awarded the prestigious AKO Literature Prize 2009. A consummate stylist, he offers evocative descriptions that bring past worlds brilliantly to life.
Paul Vincent, from the Dutch. Paul Vincent taught Dutch at the University of London for over 20 years before becoming a full-time translator. He has translated a wide variety of titles by Louis Couperus and J.J. Slauerhoff for Pushkin Press. In 2012 he was awarded the Vondel Translation Prize.