Consul General Speeches

NS Publieksprijs, Spiegelzaal, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, October 28, 2008

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.

“Huilen is voor mensen die nooit iets hebben meegemaakt.”  This sentence follows the devastating description of a day when an American frontierswoman suffered incomprehensible loss during an 1836 attack by young Comanches on her family’s Texas outpost.  In “De Overgave,” Arthur Japin has given us an unforgettable character – the hard, driven “Granny Parker” – and her unforgettable story, based on real events during the tumultuous eighteenth century conflicts between settlers of the western territories of the United States and Native Americans.  Jumping back and forth through time, “De Overgave” weaves Granny’s story together with that of her Comanche great grandson – someone who is inextricably tied to her past as well as her fate.

In creating this gripping portrayal, Japin allows us to cross emotional, geographic and temporal borders and humanizes the myth of the American “wild West.”  His elegant prose makes vividly real an iconic American landscape and, importantly, gives us a timeless story of loss and forgiveness.

It is a great honor for me to present the 2008 NS Publieksprijs to Arthur Japin.  Congratulations.