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The Game Changer is a versatile and entertaining novel in which four themes are intertwined. The style is direct and lively, in accordance with the Rotterdam area prevailing way of live. The novel gives a funny yet rough idea of Rotterdam as a port city and metropolis in the making against a politically charged background: the uprising populism in Europe. This makes the novel timely, probably for the coming years. But it can just as well be considered timeless, in a literary sense.The illustrious company doctor Henk van Wijnen-Swarttouw, a born entrepreneur and flamboyant self-made man, gets in trouble when the justice department accuses him of corruption and tax evasion. At that same moment his daughter Julia begins her sabbatical after high school. Soon, she manages to make a name in the art world, using her devotion for a better, sustainable world as a driving force. She presents her art in the famous Witte de Withstreet. Through her art she is challenging her father to turn his live around. She wants him to restructure his heavy chemical industry business in the port of Rotterdam and the Maasvlakte, one of the biggest harbours in the world, into a sustainable, green company.Julia, just turned eighteen, is allowed by her father to take a year off after 'cum laude' obtaining her high school diploma, under strict condition that she will afterwards start her medical study at the Erasmus university. During this sabbatical, she insists that she may use the art gallery of her parents as an exhibition space. She focuses on her passion, creating modern art and raise the issue of sustainability, while her father is trying to save his company, crammed with bad running businesses, from bankruptcy. Within one of these companies Cor Figee operates. He resides with his wife and eleven-year-old son Daan in a working class neighbourhood where different ethnicities live together. The Turkish and mentally disabled neighbour Elenoor frequently comes over to play with Daan. Cor Figee has pinned his hopes on Henk, the new owner of the business, and works day and night to finish a vital deal with the Russians. At the moment Henk should concentrate on saving the family business, he becomes obsessed with Julia her performance art and concern for sustainability, while she becomes embroiled in a complicated affair with the Moroccan named El Bachir. Her best friend, their Romanian housekeeper Tatjana (is that her real name?), tries to survive in her own special way. Then the mother of Julia and Jeroen (her brother in law), as they are afraid of losing the family business, turn to the German Psychiatrist von Stürmer. They want him to cure Henk and his daughter mentally.Will Henk be freed by the psychiatrist from his obsession with Julia? Will his daughter seduce him through her artworks to do something better with the family business then making money only?… (más)
The Game Changer takes place in the Netherlands and I expect was originally written in Dutch. I have to say I would bet a lot of money that the manuscript I received for review was just run through a translation program and then sent to me. There was no obvious intent to actually edit it into English. While this can work for small documents and emails etc. it definitely does not work for novels. I agree it was a pretty impressive translation job and better than google translate, but it still left a huge amount to be desired.
The first obvious problem are idioms. All languages have them, and many have things that mean the same thing. ‘Du hast einen vogel auf dem Kopf’ is roughly equivalent to ‘you are nuts!’. But a direct translation is ‘you have a bird in your head’. Another problem is that German, Dutch, French, Spanish etc. put verbs often at the end of a sentence. While this can work in intended situations, such as when Yoda speaks, it can be very disorienting for it to be constant. Especially when used in a ‘joke’ or being sarcastic. It completely changes the whole tone of the previous sentence(s) and you have to read it again.
There are added words, missing words, and plenty of just plain wrong words scattered throughout this manuscript. Certain words are very consistently misused ‘live’ instead of ‘life’ is very common. Several other words use a ‘v’ instead of an ‘f’ and have an even stranger effect on the story because they are not as closely related.
Here is the story as I understand it. The main character, Henk, is having some issues, his wife has fairly recently left him for another woman, and is living in a warmer country with her. His daughter got him to concede to let her take a year off before going to University (to become a medical Dr.) and the use of his art gallery for that time to do exhibitions. He seems to be obsessed with her art and how she is living her life and the people she hangs around, especially the men.
I thought he was dealing with some legal issues with his businesses and then someone robbed him and the police seem to think he had something to do with it. He hired a private investigator who seems to have some magic software that can do anything to spy and track people. And Henk seems to spend a LOT of time wandering around Rotterdam incognito for no real reason I can understand (and gets mugged frequently). He also has an employee/business partner? Cor, who seems to always be thinking about ‘doing the right thing’ and working hard to earn his paycheck. Honestly, he makes less sense than anyone else in the book to me.
This book (according to the jacket and other reviews) is supposed to be a humorous book, but it didn’t translate at all to English, for me at least. Most of the time I spend trying to understand what the hell is going on. Even cutting scenes from one person to another, or just to a new location are often not well delineated and leave me confused. Often I feel like I did way back in middle school when I tried reading a Robert Ludlum book, lots of work to get just a little understanding. With the language that comes through the translation, I do suspect this would be a pretty good and interesting book in it’s native language (if you read it) and might be worth it if it had a real translator/editor work it over for an English reading audience. ( )
The Game Changer is a versatile and entertaining novel in which four themes are intertwined. The style is direct and lively, in accordance with the Rotterdam area prevailing way of live. The novel gives a funny yet rough idea of Rotterdam as a port city and metropolis in the making against a politically charged background: the uprising populism in Europe. This makes the novel timely, probably for the coming years. But it can just as well be considered timeless, in a literary sense.The illustrious company doctor Henk van Wijnen-Swarttouw, a born entrepreneur and flamboyant self-made man, gets in trouble when the justice department accuses him of corruption and tax evasion. At that same moment his daughter Julia begins her sabbatical after high school. Soon, she manages to make a name in the art world, using her devotion for a better, sustainable world as a driving force. She presents her art in the famous Witte de Withstreet. Through her art she is challenging her father to turn his live around. She wants him to restructure his heavy chemical industry business in the port of Rotterdam and the Maasvlakte, one of the biggest harbours in the world, into a sustainable, green company.Julia, just turned eighteen, is allowed by her father to take a year off after 'cum laude' obtaining her high school diploma, under strict condition that she will afterwards start her medical study at the Erasmus university. During this sabbatical, she insists that she may use the art gallery of her parents as an exhibition space. She focuses on her passion, creating modern art and raise the issue of sustainability, while her father is trying to save his company, crammed with bad running businesses, from bankruptcy. Within one of these companies Cor Figee operates. He resides with his wife and eleven-year-old son Daan in a working class neighbourhood where different ethnicities live together. The Turkish and mentally disabled neighbour Elenoor frequently comes over to play with Daan. Cor Figee has pinned his hopes on Henk, the new owner of the business, and works day and night to finish a vital deal with the Russians. At the moment Henk should concentrate on saving the family business, he becomes obsessed with Julia her performance art and concern for sustainability, while she becomes embroiled in a complicated affair with the Moroccan named El Bachir. Her best friend, their Romanian housekeeper Tatjana (is that her real name?), tries to survive in her own special way. Then the mother of Julia and Jeroen (her brother in law), as they are afraid of losing the family business, turn to the German Psychiatrist von Stürmer. They want him to cure Henk and his daughter mentally.Will Henk be freed by the psychiatrist from his obsession with Julia? Will his daughter seduce him through her artworks to do something better with the family business then making money only?
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The first obvious problem are idioms. All languages have them, and many have things that mean the same thing. ‘Du hast einen vogel auf dem Kopf’ is roughly equivalent to ‘you are nuts!’. But a direct translation is ‘you have a bird in your head’. Another problem is that German, Dutch, French, Spanish etc. put verbs often at the end of a sentence. While this can work in intended situations, such as when Yoda speaks, it can be very disorienting for it to be constant. Especially when used in a ‘joke’ or being sarcastic. It completely changes the whole tone of the previous sentence(s) and you have to read it again.
There are added words, missing words, and plenty of just plain wrong words scattered throughout this manuscript. Certain words are very consistently misused ‘live’ instead of ‘life’ is very common. Several other words use a ‘v’ instead of an ‘f’ and have an even stranger effect on the story because they are not as closely related.
Here is the story as I understand it. The main character, Henk, is having some issues, his wife has fairly recently left him for another woman, and is living in a warmer country with her. His daughter got him to concede to let her take a year off before going to University (to become a medical Dr.) and the use of his art gallery for that time to do exhibitions. He seems to be obsessed with her art and how she is living her life and the people she hangs around, especially the men.
I thought he was dealing with some legal issues with his businesses and then someone robbed him and the police seem to think he had something to do with it. He hired a private investigator who seems to have some magic software that can do anything to spy and track people. And Henk seems to spend a LOT of time wandering around Rotterdam incognito for no real reason I can understand (and gets mugged frequently). He also has an employee/business partner? Cor, who seems to always be thinking about ‘doing the right thing’ and working hard to earn his paycheck. Honestly, he makes less sense than anyone else in the book to me.
This book (according to the jacket and other reviews) is supposed to be a humorous book, but it didn’t translate at all to English, for me at least. Most of the time I spend trying to understand what the hell is going on. Even cutting scenes from one person to another, or just to a new location are often not well delineated and leave me confused. Often I feel like I did way back in middle school when I tried reading a Robert Ludlum book, lots of work to get just a little understanding. With the language that comes through the translation, I do suspect this would be a pretty good and interesting book in it’s native language (if you read it) and might be worth it if it had a real translator/editor work it over for an English reading audience. (