“To promote the book, I had mugs made with a picture of a bald man with a goatee on them. People often ask me if it’s Stalin. ‘No’, I have to explain, ‘it’s another villain, Lenin.’” Frank Nellen chuckles. He uses the anecdote to explain why his latest novel, set in the Soviet Union, includes a list of names and terms. “For many people, the Soviet era is now just a distant blur; they don’t remember much about it. It was precisely the kind of unfamiliar setting I wanted for my story. While the Netherlands has good writers, our literature tends to stick close to home”, he says over Zoom.
Nellen himself is well versed in the topic, as Observant noted in a review earlier this year. For four years, he devoted almost all his free time to the novel, with half of that time spent on preparation. “I have two shelves full of books about the Soviet Union here”, he says with a sweeping gesture. “I spent two years reading and thinking about it before I really started writing the book. By then, I’d already come up with and scrapped a story idea.”
Let’s fast-forward to 2023. How were you doing by then?
“The book was partly finished. I worked on it until August. When I sent the manuscript to my publisher, I didn’t know if it was any good. While writing, I’m so close to the text that all I see are periods and commas. But unlike my debut novel [Land van dadels en prinsen, 2019], I always felt like it was heading in the right direction.”
That feeling was confirmed by the first review.
“Definitely. De Volkskrant was lyrical about it. Their reviewer had already said on the radio how happy she was to have picked De onzichtbaren from the pile of new books from unknown authors. I was jumping for joy when I heard that – it was an incredible moment for me. And subsequent reviews in other newspapers and magazines were also positive. It was fantastic. Critics are professionals; their approval means something. Yes, that kind of literary recognition is important to me. It’s like being a PhD candidate and hearing that the assessment committee has approved your dissertation.”
What about recognition in terms of sales figures, commercial success?
“I want my book to be read, of course, but I’m less interested in that side of the literary world. I don’t need the income, which is not very substantial anyway, and I don’t necessarily want to become bigger than other authors. For me, it’s about the joy of telling a story. It’s like dreaming – I disappear into my own world, where I’m almost like God. I don’t have to conform to others or reality, like I do in my job as a tax consultant. I have complete control over my characters and what happens to them. It’s an incredible feeling.”
A pinch of salt
But it doesn’t come automatically, he hastens to add. “For me, the writing process always involves this uncomfortable period where I haven’t found the right tone yet and can’t quite capture the story. This time, it lasted almost two years. But when it all clicks into place, the story just flows from your fingertips – a delightful sensation. Once you reach that stage, writing becomes addictive. Dutch author Harry Mulisch once claimed he wrote Twee vrouwen in two weeks, as if in a trance. I think we should take that with a pinch of salt, as is often the case with Mulisch, but it’s true that the process is nearly impossible to slow down.”
Was that feeling worth two years of struggle and the sacrifice of your free time?
“Yes, although working on this book took a lot out of me. It was a tough year. I became a father at the end of 2022, and my work at UM and as a tax consultant at Baker Tilly continued. I wrote in the evenings, on weekends and during holidays. I was teetering on the edge of burnout. Two more months would’ve broken me. When I’m low on time, my rest, sleep and social life suffer. Fortunately, my friends understand the writer in me, and they get that it takes time to achieve something. And my girlfriend is an independent person with a rich social life. I wouldn’t have wanted to sacrifice my relationship for this. How I am now? [Laughs] I’m fine, coming back down to earth. But I won’t start working on a new novel next year, and I’m limiting my work hours to a maximum of 50 per week.”
Romanticised image
How much has changed for him now that he has made his literary breakthrough? Will writing become an even larger part of his life? Nellen hesitantly acknowledges that the positive response to De onzichtbaren has set certain wheels in motion. “It has raised my profile as an author. My publisher has offered me a multi-book deal, and I’m doing interviews and events. [Laughs] Apparently, I now hold some kind of public role as a representative of the writers’ world.”
On the flip side, writing takes time “and I’m not going to rearrange my whole life for it just yet. I like my jobs too much. They also bring me into contact with people, whereas writing is a solitary activity that, in my case, takes place mainly in this attic room. The romanticised image of the literary bohemian sitting at a typewriter in a small Parisian café couldn’t be further from the truth.”