Antoinette Fawcett
Antoinette Fawcett is an award-winning member of the Translators Association of the Society of Authors. Her most recent literary translation is The Limits of My Language: Meditations on Depression, by Eva Meijer. Her 2018 translation of Eva Meijer’s Bird Cottage was shortlisted for the 2019 Vondel Prize. She is the translator of Shocked Earth (Saraband 2021), by Saskia Goldschmidt from Dutch.
Saskia Goldschmidt
Saskia Goldschmidt worked in theatre and teaching before becoming a full-time writer.
Her first novel, The Hormone Factory, was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize 2013 and the Euregio Prize and has been translated into several languages. It was published in the US by Other Press (2014) and in the UK by Saraband (2016), translated by Hester Velmans. It was broadcast on the Netherlands’ Radio 1 channel and released as a podcast in 2018.
Goldschmidt’s bestselling second novel, The Vintage Queen (2015), has also been translated into several languages.
Shocked Earth (2021), translated by Antoinette Fawcett, is the first major novel about the effects of gas extraction on people living in the Dutch province of Groningen.
Shocked Earth
by Antoinette Fawcett by , Saskia Goldschmidt
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“Exquisitely captures the way our lives and identities are interwoven with the land we live on, and how its destruction will ultimately be our own. A powerful portrait of a family, an exploration of love and grief, it is perhaps most of all an essential call to action – I was both heartbroken and inspired.” Helen Sedgwick “One of my favourite books of [the year]: it was one of those rare books that I kept thinking about while I wasn’t reading it … It’s an absolute cracker … this book’s humanity is precisely where its power lies.” Helen Vassallo, Translating Women Femke, her mother Trijn and her grandfather have very different ideas about how to run their family farm. Tensions between mother and daughter are growing; Femke wants to switch to sustainable growing principles, whilst her mother considers this an attack on tradition. To make matters worse, their home province of Groningen is experiencing a series of earthquakes caused by a gas extraction operation near their farm. While the cracks and splinters in their farmhouse increase, the authorities and the gas company refuse to offer the local farming community any help. In Shocked Earth, Saskia Goldschmidt investigates what it means to have your identity intensely entwined with your place of birth and your principles at odds with your closest kin. And how to keep standing when the world as you know it is slowly falling apart. Download the Shocked Earth BOOK GROUP GUIDE
REVIEWS OF Shocked Earth
“Well-written and worth reading, offering political insight and a glimpse of a little-known part of the Netherlands.” Environmental Book Club
“Shocked Earth is a powerful testament to what happens when the gatekeepers of the land, those with a deep connection to the earth, are silenced and displaced. But it’s also full of hope.” Emma Yates-Badley, Northern Soul
“One of my favourite books of [the year]: it was one of those rare books that I kept thinking about while I wasn’t reading it … It’s an absolute cracker … this book’s humanity is precisely where its power lies.” Helen Vassallo, Translating Women
Written with attentiveness to the complex relationship between landscape, community and nature, Shocked Earth tells a powerful and moving story of love, loss and determination to look ahead to the future.” Ben Smith, author of Doggerland
“Last weekend I read the book in one breath. How little did I know about the problems and life in the Groningen countryside ... will definitely recommend this beautiful novel!" Ria van Halem, bookseller Boekaa Verkaaik
“In order to be able to write Shocked Earth, Saskia Goldschmidt moved to a rural region … worked on a dairy farm and spoke to its inhabitants. This effort pays off in this thorough novel with a lot of empathy, showing how the earthquakes … forever change the lives of the people trying to keep this business going.” Dagblad van het Noorden
“Goldschmidt writes eloquently... showing the way the North of the Netherlands is held captive by the gas sourcing business.” NRC
“Goldschmidt manages to portray the lives of farmers in great literary style, and with authentic vocabulary.” Het Parool
“Shocked Earth shows us the impact of natural disasters on people´s lives. This is what literature can do.” Nieuwsweekend
"...a rural novel in which the characters by changing circumstances forced. With beautiful heroines and accomplices, opponents and a wonderful character like Fokko. " Louis Stiller
"A novel with great ambitions, which remains credible." Faithful
"Shocked Earth exquisitely captures the way our lives and identities are interwoven with the land we live on, and how its destruction will ultimately be our own. A powerful portrait of a family, an exploration of love and grief, it is perhaps most of all an essential call to action – I was both heartbroken and inspired." Helen Sedgwick