La Superba

If Italo Calvino decided to make one of his invisible cities visible, the result might look something like Pfeijffer’s Genoa. - Benjamin Moser

An absolute joy to read, La Superba, winner of the most prestigious Dutch literary prize, is a Rabelaisian, stylistic tour-de-force about a writer who becomes trapped in his walk on the wild side in mysterious and exotic Genoa, centering on the stories of migration and immigration, legal and illegal, telling the story of modern Europe. Part migrant story, part perverse travel guide, La Superba is a wholly postmodern ode to the imagination that lovingly describes the labyrinthine and magical city that Pfeijffer calls home: Genoa, Italy, the city known as La Superba for its beauty and rich history.

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (b. 1968), poet, dramatist, novelist, renowned in the Netherlands as a master of language, is the only two-time winner of the Tzum Prize for the most beautiful sentence written in Dutch (including one in La Superba!).