Christiaan Weijts, born in Leiderdorp, the Netherlands, in 1976. M.A. from Leiden University. Writer in The Hague.
Writer-in-Residence (1 September 2011 – 31 January 2012)
A NOVEL
When I started working at NIAS in September 2011, I came here with a manuscript-in-progress that had the working-title Augustusplein and counted 39.000 words. At the moment of leaving the working-title has changed in what will probably be the real title: Euforie (‘Euphoria’). The word-counter says it contains 86.000 words.
The book definitely benefitted from being written in the stimulating and multi-disciplined environment of the NIAS. One would grant it every book to be written in institutes like this one. Especially for my book it appeared very useful, since the main character is an architect, and thus (like a writer) a generalist, someone working in a discipline which has connections with all different fields – politics, economics, ‘hard’ sciences, psychology, history – integrating them to a whole.