"plot twist"

A meta-textual matryoshka doll of a novel from a renowned voice in Flemish literature. 

The twisting narrative of Louis Paul Boon's 1953 masterpiece follows a young girl named Ondine and her brother Valeer, born into poverty at the turn of the century in the industrial city of Aalst, Belgium. Ondine's coming of age is interwoven with a reworking of the medieval fable of Reynard the Fox, as well as a metanarrative in which an author named Louis Paul Boon and his colorful group of friends discuss the writing of a novel named Chapel Road, debating how best to present Ondine's story.

Groundbreaking among post-war Dutch literature for its postmodern structure and irreverent, dialect-studded use of language, Boon's allegory of the rise and fall of socialism in Flanders presents his theory of the novel as a type of "illegal writing" where digressions are far more important than a carefully constructed plot.

Introduction by Chad W. Post

Louis Paul Boon (1912-1979) started out as a house painter but went on to become the author of a large and rich oeuvre spanning several genres: from the compelling historical epics he composed later in life to his sharp, witty work as a newspaper columnist and his tongue-in-cheek, scabrous novels. Boon is one of the most important writers of Flemish literature in the twentieth century, a keen observer of society, the individual and the interplay between them.

Adrienne Dixon is a translator of Dutch and Flemish literature.

Chad W. Post is the founder and publisher of Open Letter Books. He is also the editorial director of Dalkey Archive Press, where he was formerly the associate director. Over the course of his career, he founded the Translation Database, the Best Translated Book Awards, multiple literary podcasts (Two Month Review, Three Percent), the Three Percent website, and currently writes two newsletters: The Three Percent Problem, and Mining the Dalkey Archive. He is also the author of The Three Percent Problem: Rants and Responses on Publishing, Translation, and the Future of Reading. His articles and book reviews have appeared in a range of publications. In 2018 he received the Words Without Borders Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature. 

On the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend's phone and makes a startling discovery: he's an anonymous internet conspiracy theorist, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in internet fakery, irony, and outrage, she's not exactly shocked by the revelation.

Actually, she's relieved-he was always a little distant-and she plots to end their floundering relationship while on a trip to the Women's March in D.C. But the uncovering of his double life is only the first in a series of bizarre twists that expose a world whose truths are shaped by online lies. Suddenly left with no reason to stay in New York-or to be anywhere in particular-our unnamed narrator flees to Berlin, embarking on her own cycles of manipulation in the deceptive spaces of her daily life, from dating apps to expat meetups, open-plan offices to bureaucratic waiting rooms

plot twist ii is a collection of 11 essays and short stories from the hosts of plot twist’s 2019 - 2020 programme of reading groups and workshops. It includes meditations on privacy, work, and failure; a sci-fi tale in four acts; a story on dizziness and giddiness; two essays on the cultural politics of disgust; and a musing on the peculiar ways language and words stay with us, lodged for a lifetime in our memories. also included are the full reading lists from the year’s programme, and a limited edition riso printed poster (A3) by Lucie de Bréchard (@journal2bor). plot twist is a literary collective, reading group, and experiment in self-organised learning, founded in 2018 by Jo Kali and Georgie Sinclair. plot twist ii is their second publishing project.

Contributions from Andreea Breazu, Angelica Sgouros, Elisa Grasso, Georgie Sinclair, Jo Kali, Juliette Lizotte, Loren Ewart, Lucia Dove, Naomi Credé, Rosie Haward and Sarah Eskens. Designed by Juliette Lizotte and Lucie de Bréchard.