astrid roemer

Astrid Roemer (1947–2026) was a central voice in Surinamese and Dutch-language literature. In 1966, at the age of 19, she emigrated from Suriname to the Netherlands and later described herself as a cosmopolitan writer. Her work confronts the afterlives of colonialism and the intimacies of nationhood through a formally inventive prose.

She was awarded the P.C. Hooft Prize in 2016 and the Dutch Literature Prize (Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren) in 2021. The English translation of On a Woman’s Madness was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature and was longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize.