IN THE SHAPE OF A WRECKING BALL (2026)

THE EMPEROR OF POPULIA (2023)

CONSTELLATION
(2022)

In de vorm van een kogel collects my best short prose from 2018 to 2026: 66 pieces in three sequences, including eight previously unpublished texts. Stagnation, resistance and movement are central. Small acts and flashes of humanity and empathy confront the growing ascendancy of the absurd, the malicious and the rotten. Sometimes it is just funny.

Consul Lucas ter Linden is found dead in the car park of the seedy sex club Het Roze Ballet, in the fictional city-state of Populië-Econovina. So begins De keizer van Populië: a pitch-black comedy, a twisted take on Jan Terlouw’s De koning van Katoren and a noir detective story rolled into one, with supporting roles for corrupt techno-oligarchs, pure-bred dairy tycoons, historical cosplayers and thuggish organic farmers.

Constellatie unfolds across a single winter night, as a man decides to stay awake until the first snow falls. Each hour, another sign of the zodiac reaches its zenith, while the ghost of a house cat keeps padding through the scene. Strangers, strange thoughts, rising emotions and reflections weave together into a dream experienced with open eyes.

FRAGMENTARIANS
(2020)

IN THE SHAPE OF A BIRD
(2017)

RECOMBINANT
(2016)

Fragmentariërs is a semi-autobiographical novel in seven chapters, each covering a single day. Its protagonist is in his early thirties, works in Brussels and lives in Ghent. Storm clouds are gathering over his relationship. He spends his free hours among a wonderfully varied cast of familiar and bizarre figures in Ghent’s nightlife.

In de vorm van een vogel collects 99 columns spanning nine years, arranged by season rather than by year. Most originally appeared on the Gedachten blog, but have been carefully reread and edited where necessary. Think of a band’s box set of remastered recordings.

Across 14 short stories and eight microstories, Recombinant takes the reader through Ghent’s nightlife districts, humanity’s first colony around another star, the deserts of Arizona and cosy dining rooms in Flemish suburbia. Its characters include old friends, young fools, hardened police officers, scientists, wage slaves and petty criminals.

CHICXULUB
(2024)

INDISCRETE MATHEMATICS
(2021)

THE SPEED OF DARKNESS
(2019)

Chicxulub blends three geological rings of cataclysm, old pain and acceptance. Yet it is not all darkness and melancholy: distance opens new perspectives, allowing light to slip back in now and then. And unlike its namesake, this collection has not killed a single dinosaur. An audio edition is also available.

The mathematically minded reader will know of a discipline called discrete mathematics. It is one I will never master: mathematics and I have had a difficult relationship ever since primary school. Hence Indiscrete wiskunde: rough, clever rather than intelligent, layered but not especially clear. Occasionally a little absurd, too.

Awe-inspiring things are coming towards us: often ugly and barely comprehensible, sometimes marked by a fleeting beauty. De snelheid van de duisternis contains 29 poems, deeply troubled by the world and in constant dialogue with others. They will not cheer anyone up. But those who know me do not read my work for an evening of carefree laughter.

VOLTERRA
(2017)

Volterra takes its name from an Italian town once at the heart of the lost Etruscan civilisation. Its four cycles struggle to keep out the all-pervasive darkness that seems to have the world in its grip. An audio edition is also available.

ENCELADUS
(2015)

Enceladus contains 37 poems in four cycles. Its central concerns are journeys, overwhelming tidal waves, attempts to get a grip on reality and the language that must be invented to do so. As a bonus, it includes the catastrophe poem De Grote Mandrenke.

SUBDUCTION
(2013)

Subductie consists of three cycles of seven to eleven poems, loosely grouped by theme. The title traces a journey: one tectonic plate slipping beneath another, an act of oblivion whose consequences remain visible above ground as mountains and volcanoes.

FORGING SMART DEALS WITH CHINA (2019)

THE NEW STATE
(2017)

Published by Pelckmans Pro in October 2019, Winnen met de Chinezen was written with my ghostly hand guiding the pen of Pieter Verstraete, a sinologist and businessman sui generis. I also translated it into English: Forging Smart Deals with China. In daily life, I combine copywriting and translation through Eisbär Communications.

Cover: Pelckmans Pro

In De Nieuwe Staat, I explore what a new structure of government might look like, where its centres of power should lie and how to understand the present political landscape. The hope—surely a vain one—is to offer a blueprint for getting our civilisation to 2050. Available free of charge.

THE LEAGUE OF MEDIOCRE GENTLEMEN AND -WOMEN (2021)

THE LEGEND OF THE FOUR
(2014)

Looking for an unusual but easy-to-play card game? The League of Mediocre Gentlemen and -Women is here to help. Pit local fascists against socialist apparatchiks and counter simpering prigs with pillars of the establishment.

Written in 2003, this short story was adapted into a comic in late 2014 by artist Rob Notebaert, with layout by Jo Claeys. Short, explosive and gruesome: a miniature ballad of sudden, incomprehensible suburban violence. Available free of charge.

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