Arnon Grunberg was born in Amsterdam in 1971. Starting his own publishing company at nineteen, he wrote his first novel, Blue Mondays—a European bestseller—at age twenty-three. Two of his novels, Phantom Pain and The Asylum Seeker, won the AKO Literature Prize, the Dutch equivalent of the Booker Prize. Living in New York, he writes columns, book reviews, and essays for newspapers and magazines.

Jörgen Hofmeester once had it all: a beautiful wife, a nice house with a garden in an upperclass neighborhood in Amsterdam, a respectable job as an editor, two lovely daughters named Ibi and Tirza, and a large amount of money in a Swiss bank account. But during the preparations for Tirza’s graduation party, we come to know what he has lost. His wife has left him; Ibi is starting a bed and breakfast in France, an idea which he opposed; the director of the publishing house has fired him; and his savings have vanished in the wake of 9/11.

But Hofmeester still has Tirza, until she introduces him to her new boyfriend, Choukri—who bears a disturbing resemblance to Mohammed Atta—and they announce their plan to spend several months in Africa. A heartrending and masterful story of a man seeking redemption, Tirza marks a high point in Grunberg’s still-developing oeuvre.

[The publishers gratefully acknowledge the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.]