The Nachgeborenen, Elisabeth Holdsworth second from left, Fritz front centre (photograph courtesy of Elisabeth Holdsworth)

In today’s episode, ABR looks back at the winner of the inaugural Calibre Essay Prize in 2007: ‘An Die Nachgeborenen: For Those Who Come After’ by Elisabeth Holdsworth. Holdsworth was born in the Netherlands in the years following World War II. Zeeland, where she grew up, was heavily bombed during the war and later flooded. Her poignant essay is a dialogue with the past, detailing her recent return to the Netherlands, her family’s vicissitudes and suffering during the war, and an unforgettable portrait of her conflicted mother.

Subscribe via iTunes, Google, or Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.