David Van Reybrouck – författare

"Mästerverk om indonesisk frigörelse"Svenska Dagbladet

"Van Reybrouck skriver mästerligt om den nederländska koloniseringen, japanska ockupationen och hur Indonesien – världens fjärde folkrikaste stat – blev det första landet att utropa sin självständighet efter andra världskriget."ETC

"Ett magnifikt verk om den indonesiska frigörelsekampen"Dagens Arena

"I sin bok om den indonesiska kampen för självständighet lyckas han få de mest anmärkningsvärda vittnen att tala."De Volksrant

"En enastående bedrift både vad gäller research och berättarkonst. Historia när den är som bäst."Yuval Harari

"En efterlängtad och fullkomligt fängslande skildring av Indonesiens födelse... vecklar ut sig över en enorm geopolitisk duk och svajar aldrig... Den susar fram som en ångbåt på Javasjön, driven av berättelserna av dess häpnadsväckande huvudpersoner."Financial Times

"Att berätta historien om denna plats är... en enorm uppgift som kräver en monumental insats. Detta är vad den belgiska historikern David Van Reybrouck har åstadkommit i sin lysande historia, Revolusi."The Guardian

I fem år arbetade David Van Reybrouck på sitt monumentala verk Revolusi. Han intervjuade de sista levande vittnena till självständighetskampen på indonesiska äldreboenden, i japanska megastäder och på avlägsna öar.

Van Reybrouck väver samman berättelserna till en gripande historia om den indonesiska självständighetskampen, som nådde sin höjdpunkt på 1940-talet. Revolusi, som revolutionen kom att kallas, har länge setts som en konflikt mellan kolonisatören Nederländerna och de koloniserade Ostindien. Men David Van Reybrouck är den förste att lösgöra kampen från det nationella perspektivet och visa dess betydelse som en central global händelse, som kom att få enorma återverkningar för hur världen ser ut idag.

Indonesien var det första landet som förklarade sig självständigt, vilket kom att inspirera självständighetsrörelser i Asien, Afrika och arabvärlden, inte minst efter att det fria Indonesien organiserade Bandungkonferensen 1955, den första världskongressen utan väst.

Revolusi är ett stycke lysande samtidshistoria som omdefinierar vår förståelse för vår tid.

*Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024* *Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize*A story of staggering scope and drama, Revolusi is the masterful and definitive account of the epic revolution that changed the course of the 20th century.'Astounding . . . history at its best' Yuval Noah Harari'Utterly compelling . . . astonishing' Financial Times'Superb' GuardianOn a sunny morning in August 1945, a handful of tired people raised a homemade cotton flag and announced the birth of a new nation: Indonesia. For three and a half centuries, its people had been subject to Dutch colonial rule. It would take another four years of guerrilla warfare and resistance – the ‘Revolusi’ – to finally win their freedom, blazing a trail that would reshape the world.Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eye-witness testimonies, David Van Reybrouck’s superbly woven narrative is alive with human detail at every turn, showing Indonesia’s struggle for independence to be one of the defining dramas of the twentieth century.*A Financial Times, Evening Standard, History Today and Prospect Best Book of the Year*‘A magnificent fusion of oral history, sparkling analysis and historical wisdom. Revolusi has it all: a masterpiece’ Sebastian Mallaby‘Masterly . . . compelling . . . convincingly argues that Indonesia in itself represents a global crossroads, one of the most important in modern history’ Elizabeth Pisani, The Times‘We learn something utterly fascinating on every single page’ Evening Standard, Books of the Year‘The story of [Indonesia’s] formation is delivered in a manner that genuinely seems unsurpassable’ History Today, Books of the Year‘Revolusi briskly ushers Indonesia onto the centre stage of modern history’ Pankaj Mishra‘With rare narrative brilliance, Revolusi gives us a history at once vast and intimate, a history in colour’ Laksmi Pamuntjak‘A magisterial and gripping account of events of urgent importance to us now’ Jason Burke‘A wonderful and important book’ Peter Frankopan‘Majestic and beautifully written’ Times Literary Supplement‘Immensely readable’ Adam Hochschild, Atlantic‘An electrifying narrative’ Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal‘The definitive account of a neglected epoch’ Economist‘Masterly’ J M Coetzee

Whenever there are elections, the results are the same: fear-mongering, division and broken promises. Against Elections offers a new diagnosis – and an ancient remedy.'Excellent . . . Why does our system keep electing people whose incomes, assets, interests and psychology are hugely at variance with ours? Because that is what it is designed to do' George Monbiot, Guardian'Very persuasive . . . invigorating' Daniel Finkelstein, The TimesAs this ingenious book shows, the original purpose of elections was not democracy: it was to exclude the people from power by appointing an elite to govern over them.In fact, for most of its 3000-year history, democracy did not involve elections at all: members of the public were appointed to positions in government through a combination of volunteering and lottery.Based on studies and trials from around the globe, this hugely influential manifesto presents the practical case for a true democracy – one that actually works.Urgent, heretical and completely convincing, Against Elections leaves only one question to be answered: what are we waiting for?'Riveting' Irish Examiner'Persuasive' Financial Times'A convincing case' Observer

FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL PRIZE FOR HISTORY‘Not only deserves the description “epic”, in its true sense, but the term “masterpiece” as well’ IndependentThis gripping epic tells the story of one of the world’s most critical failed nation-states: the Democratic Republic of Congo. Interweaving his own family’s history with the voices of a diverse range of individuals – charismatic dictators, feuding warlords, child soldiers, and many in the African diaspora of Europe and China – Van Reybrouck offers a deeply humane approach to political history, focusing squarely on the Congolese perspective and returning a nation’s history to its people.

A century after it began, we still struggle with the terrible reality of the First World War, often through republished photographs of its horrors: the muddy trenches, the devastated battlefields, the maimed survivors. Due to the crude film cameras used at the time, the look of the Great War has traditionally been grainy, blurred, and monochrome-until now. The First World War presents a startlingly different perspective, one based on rare glass plate photographs, that reveals the war with previously unseen, even uncanny, clarity. Scanned from the original plates, with scratches and other flaws expertly removed, these oversized reproductions offer a wealth of unusual moments, including scenes of men in training, pictures of African colonial troops on the Western front, landscapes of astonishing destruction, and postmortem portraits of Belgian soldiers killed in action. Readers previously familiar with only black-and-white or sepia-toned prints of the hostilities will be riveted by the book's many authentic color photographs, products of the early autochrome method.From children playing war games to a wrenching deathbed visit, these images are extraordinary not only for their subject matter, but also for the wide range of emotions they evoke. Accompanied by a preface from celebrated writer Geoff Dyer and an essay by historian David Van Reybrouck, the photographs here serve both as remarkable witnesses to the everyday life of warfare and as dramatic works of art in their own right. These images, taken by some of the conflict's most gifted photographers, will radically change how we visualize the First World War.

**Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024**A story of staggering scope and drama, Revolusi is the masterful and definitive account of the epic revolution that sparked the decolonisation of the modern world.'Astounding . . . history at its best' Yuval Noah Harari'Utterly compelling . . . astonishing' Financial Times'Superb' GuardianOn a sunny Friday morning in August 1945, a handful of tired people raised a homemade cotton flag and on behalf of 68 million compatriots announced the birth of a new nation: Indonesia.Four million civilians had died during the Japanese wartime occupation that ousted its Dutch colonial regime. Another 200,000 people would lose their lives in the astonishingly brutal conflict that ensued - as the Dutch used savage violence to reassert their control, and as Britain and America became embroiled in pacifying Indonesia's guerrilla war of resistance: the 'Revolusi'. It was not until December 1949 that the newly created United Nations finally brought the conflict to an end - and with it, 350 years of colonial rule - setting a precedent that would reshape the world.Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eye-witness testimonies, David Van Reybrouck turns this vast and complex story into an utterly gripping narrative that is alive with human detail at every turn. A landmark publication, Revolusi shows Indonesia's struggle for independence to be one of the defining dramas of the twentieth century.'A magnificent fusion of oral history, sparkling analysis, and historical wisdom. Revolusi has it all: a masterpiece' Sebastain Mallaby'A magisterial and gripping account of events of urgent importance to us now' Jason Burke'A wonderful book' Peter Frankopan'Masterly' J M Coetzee** Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize ** A Financial Times, Evening Standard, History Today and Prospect Best Book of 2024 **

Where do our images about early hominids come from? In this fascinating in-depth study, David Van Reybrouck demonstrates how input from ethnography and primatology has deeply influenced our visions about the past from the 19th century to this day – often far beyond the available evidence. Victorian scholars were keen to look at contemporary Australian and Tasmanian aboriginals to understand the enigmatic Neanderthal fossils. Likewise, today’s primatologists debate to what extent bonobos, baboons or chimps may be regarded as stand-ins for early human ancestors. The belief that the contemporary world provides ‘living links’ still goes strong. Such primate models, Van Reybrouck argues, continue the highly problematic ‘comparative method’ of the Victorian times. He goes on to show how the field of ethnoarchaeology has succeeded in circumventing the major pitfalls of such analogical reasoning.A truly interdisciplinary study, this work shows how scholars working in different fields can effectively improve their methods for interpreting the deep past by understanding the historical challenges of adjacent disciplines.Overviewing two centuries of intellectual debate in fields as diverse as archaeology, ethnography and primatology, Van Reybrouck’s book is one long plea for trying to understand the past on its own terms, rather than as facile projections from the present.David Van Reybrouck (Bruges, 1971) was trained as an archaeologist at the universities of Leuven, Cambridge and Leiden. Before becoming a highly successful literary author (The Plague, Mission, Congo…), he worked as a historian of ideas. For more than twelve years, he was co-editor of Archaeological Dialogues. In 2011-12, he held the prestigious Cleveringa Chair at the University of Leiden.

Kongo - en historia är en storslagen historie- och reportagebok om landet som mer än något annat symboliserar situationen i Afrika. Kongo - en historia ger ett ingående porträtt av ett sargat land, men ökar också vår förståelse för hela kontinenten. Van Reybrouck skildrar landets utveckling från och med 1850 fram till idag och berättar om exploatering, kolonisering, folkmord och krig.

Kongo - en historia har blivit en enorm kritiker- och försäljningssuccé i Nederländerna och Belgien, med över 300 000 sålda exemplar. 

David Van Reybrouck kombinerar ett enastående arkivarbete med reportagets närvaro; blandningen av fakta och personliga berättelser gör boken till något alldeles extra och fullkomligt levande. Vi möter skildringar av ofattbar grymhet - sällan har vi kommit så nära mörkrets hjärta - samtidigt ger de många personliga vittnesbörden levande exempel på enskilda människors mod, värdighet och förmåga att se framåt i de mest exeptionella omständigheter.

David Van Reybrouck, född 1971 är belgisk kulturhistoriker, arkeolog och författare. Van Reybrouck är utbildad vid universiteten i Leuven, Cambridge och Leiden och har en doktorsgrad. Han debuterade 2001 med De plaag, en reportagebok från Sydafrika och har sedan dess gett ut en lång rad romaner och dokumentärskildringar. Flera av dessa har blivit prisbelönta. Han har också skrivit flera skådespel.