Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Ice Cream Makers
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Kwast, Ernest van der
BIRTHDATE: 1981
WEBSITE: https://ernestvanderkwast.nl/
CITY: Rotterdam
STATE:
COUNTRY: Netherlands
NATIONALITY: Dutch
http://www.letterenfonds.nl/en/author/431/ernest-van-der-kwast
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1981, in Mumbai, India.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Programme-maker and presenter.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Ernest van der Kwast is a writer and programme-maker and presenter. Born in Mumbai, India in 1981, van der Kwast grew up in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where he currently resides.
Mama Tandoori
Mama Tandoori, van der Kwast’s first novel, received high acclaim in the Netherlands and Italy, selling over 100,000 copies. In the book the reader is introduced to a young boy with the same name as the author, growing up in Rotterdam under the care of his Indian mother and Dutch father. Ernest’s mother, Veena, is the ‘Mama Tandoori’ of the title, and much of the book focuses on her story. Arriving in the Netherlands in 1969, Veena had known nothing other than her homeland of Mumbai. Brokenhearted following an unrealized romance, she arrives in the Netherlands with two suitcases of symbolic trinkets. She marries Ernest’s father, an older man full of old, Dutch habits, and must begin the difficult task of adjusting to a new culture. Themes of the struggle of assimilation recur throughout the novel.
Mika Provata-Carlone in European Literature Network website wrote: “To the very last page, Mama Tandoori remains indomitably charming, frighteningly endearing, ruthlessly indispensable.”
The Ice-Cream Makers
The Ice-Cream Makers, van der Kwast’s second novel, tells the story of a family of ice-cream makers in Italy. The tradition began in the late 1800s with Giuseppe Talamini. Giuseppe developed a passion for the craft, traveling to the mountains to collect snow, which he would then mix with cream and sugar to create the frozen treat. Giuseppe’s son has a passion for inventing things, but he puts his own desires aside to continue the family business. When he has two sons, making Giuseppe a grandfather, the boys are expected to follow in the family business. Luca embraces his expected place as an ice-cream maker, developing new and exciting flavors. Giovanni rejects the family path, choosing instead to go to college and pursue a life of poetry. The story ends with a focus on Luca’s own son, who must decide whether he will follow the footsteps of his father and remain in the family business, or explore other passions, like his uncle.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews wrote that van der Kwast “tells his multigenerational tale with great sensitivity,” defining the book as, “a delightful read; smooth as ice cream on a hot summer day.” Kerryn Goldsworthy in Sydney Morning Herald Online described The Ice-Cream Makers as a “well-crafted and sometimes intriguing novel.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2017, review of The Ice Cream Makers.
Publishers Weekly, June 19, 2017, review of The Ice Cream Makers, p. 88.
ONLINE
European Literature Network, http://www.eurolitnetwork.com/ (September 15, 2017), Mika Provata-Carlone, review of Mama Tandoori.
Sydney Morning Herald Online, https://www.smh.com.au/ (November 11, 2016), Kerryn Goldsworthy, review of The Ice Cream Makers; (October 2, 2017), Kerryn Goldsworthy, review of Mama Tandoori.
Ernest van der Kwast
Mama Tandoori (2010), Ernest van der Kwast’s (b. 1981) breakthrough novel, enjoyed huge success in the Netherlands and Italy, selling over 100,000 copies. In 2012 he produced the novella Giovanna’s Navel, the German translation of which was published by Mare in early 2015. His fluid, sensual style has charmed critics everywhere. As German daily FAZ put it ‘Ernest van der Kwast flutters around his storyline like a butterfly and his playfulness delights the reader.’ He works in his hometown Rotterdam as a programme-maker and presenter.
Author and butterfly
Ernest van der Kwast was born in Mumbai, India. Mama Tandoori (2010), his breakthrough novel, enjoyed huge success in the Netherlands and Italy, selling over 100,000 copies. In 2012 he produced the novella Giovanna’s Navel, which entered the Der Spiegel bestseller list immediately after publication in Germany in spring 2015. His fluid, sensual style has charmed critics everywhere. As German daily FAZ put it ‘Ernest van der Kwast flutters around his storyline like a butterfly and his playfulness delights the reader.’ He works in his hometown Rotterdam as a programme-maker and presenter.
van der Kwast, Ernest: THE ICECREAM
MAKERS
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
van der Kwast, Ernest THE ICE-CREAM MAKERS 37 Ink/Atria (Adult Fiction) $24.00 8, 1 ISBN: 978-1-
5011-5939-8
Giovanni Talamini makes a decision to "break with the family tradition" by walking away from the ice
cream business that his great-grandfather Giuseppe began.In the late 1800s, Giuseppe found his life's
passion, gathering snow from the mountains and creating rich ice cream. Thus begins a business that churns
through the lives of four generations of the Talamini family. Giuseppe's son loved to invent things, but he
sublimated his desire and assumed his intended role as ice cream maker. Later, his two sons, Giovanni and
Luca, are expected to enter the family business. Giovanni distances himself and heads to college; later he
travels the world as director of the World Poetry Festival. Luca remains in the business, finding his passion
(or is it a diversion?) in creating unique flavors. In the end, Luca's son must decide what his role in the
family will be. In his U.S. debut, Dutch novelist van der Kwast artfully strings together a series of chapters
that could conceivably be stand-alone short stories into a cohesive whole that shows the impact, for better or
worse, that family members can have on each other's lives. Giovanni is narrator, observer, and secret keeper.
Characters seem to live in a cloud of separation despite being surrounded by those they love. The ultimate
decision as to how each character chooses to live affects present and future generations of their family in
ways both expected and unexpected. Poetry and history provide the mortar that binds the story together. Van
der Kwast tells his multigenerational tale with great sensitivity, demonstrating through powerful
observations the long-term effect of one person's decision upon others throughout the generations. A
delightful read; smooth as ice cream on a hot summer day.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"van der Kwast, Ernest: THE ICE-CREAM MAKERS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495427563/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=81a64935.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495427563
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521936105263 2/2
The Ice Cream Makers
Publishers Weekly.
264.25 (June 19, 2017): p88.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Ice Cream Makers
Ernest van der Kwast, trans, from the German by Laura Vrooman. Atria, $24 (308p) ISBN 978-1-5011-
5939-8
Van der Kwast (Mama Tandoori) returns to themes of family, legacy, and tradition in this novel about a poet
returning home to Northern Italy to help run his family's ice cream company. The Calamine family has been
in the ice cream business for three generations, making yearly trips to the Netherlands to sell hand-churned
ice cream ever since Giovanni Calamine's great-grandfather started the business, establishing their strong
reputation on these seasonal trips. Ice cream has been the family's passion for decades, and when Giovanni
decides that he wants something else for his life, his father and brother see the choice as a betrayal of a
family legacy. Van der Kwast jumps around the Calamine family tree to reveal a complex web of duty and
love that ties the family to the dream of the original patriarch and uncovers how that dream has transformed
through the years. Although plot takes a back seat to a thoughtful portrait of the family, van der Kwast
ultimately tells a moving story of how sacrifices accumulate in the wake of passions left unfulfilled. Agent:
Daniel Lazar, Writer's House. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Ice Cream Makers." Publishers Weekly, 19 June 2017, p. 88. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496643853/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8662a174.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A496643853
The Ice-Cream Makers review: Ernest van der Krast's sweet and quirky confection
By Kerryn Goldsworthy11 November 2016 — 8:28am
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Whatsapp
Send via Email
Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size
The Ice-Cream Makers
ERNEST VAN DER KWAST; TRANS., LAURA VROOMEN
The Ice-Cream Makers, by Ernest Van Der Kwast.
The Ice-Cream Makers, by Ernest Van Der Kwast.
Photo: Supplied
SCRIBE, $29.99
The Talamini family are masters of their craft: brothers Giovanni and Luca, rivals for the favours of the beautiful Sophia, are the next generation in a family dynasty from a region in Italy that specialises in making ice cream. But Giovanni breaks away, making a life for himself in the world of poetry, until an unexpected and shattering demand from his family changes his view of the world, while Luca continues to invent new flavours. Few would deny that food is a good thing, but surely we must by now have passed the peak of the quirky food-related novel set in some beautiful part of Europe, and reading this admittedly well-crafted and sometimes intriguing novel is rather like eating too much ice cream: one feels slightly ill and yet somehow still hungry.
Mama Tandoori review: Ernest van der Kwast's unsettling domestic comedy
By Kerryn Goldsworthy2 October 2017 — 10:59am
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Whatsapp
Send via Email
Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size
Mama Tandoori
Ernest van der Kwast; trans., Laura Vroomen
Mama Tandoori, by Ernest van der Kwast.
Mama Tandoori, by Ernest van der Kwast.
Photo: Supplied
Scribe, $29.99
If this novel were not called fiction, and if it were not openly autobiographical, a reader might be forgiven for thinking the title character was a racist and sexist stereotype, being offered under the guise of comedy. Like the author, the hero and narrator is called Ernest van der Kwast and is the son of a Dutch father and an Indian mother, born in Mumbai. Even his mother's actual name, it seems, is unchanged. But this is a brightly coloured and surely exaggerated portrait of a manic woman who bashes people with rolling pins and tries to get everything, up to and including plane tickets, for free. Other family members include a runaway Dutch uncle and an athletic Indian aunt. It is supposed to be funny, but there is a lot of latent hostility in the portrait of Mama Tandoori and the whole thing is unsettling.
#Riveting Reviews: Mika Provata-Carlone reviews MAMA TANDOORI by Ernest van der Kwast
SEP 15, 2017 • NO COMMENTS
A boy grows up in Rotterdam, in a family that seems to weld the fiendish with the angelic, tragedy with bliss, pure reason with the utterly irrational, brutal instinctiveness with the trauma of exile, ethnic and religious persecution, dire poverty, the yearning for kindness and the burden of loss. Overpowering ambition (whether for an illustrious mention in the form of the very last customer of a local grocer succumbing to a giant retailer, or for a gold medal in athletics in the 6 to 7 age group at the local sports club, for sons who are doctors or economists rather than writers or environmental scientists) is matched by fragile emotional equilibria and quiet genius. People and objects must cohabit a space of highly symbolic, blushingly embarrassing, deeply moving clutter, a hoarder’s lair of material possessions and bequests, of memories stuffed in dusty corners, of unbearable vital weights that will keep not one but many lives grounded and rooted – on occasion crushing and pulverising them for good measure, and with a hefty dose of bitter wit that is filled with almost transcendental perseverance.
A young Indian nurse called Veena emigrates to the Netherlands in 1969; she carries with her two suitcases full of trinkets – or, depending on the dismal anguish of the source, incalculable treasure. She also carries the shards of a broken heart, from an abortive romance that never happened – except in a version of surreal authenticity that surpasses any Bollywood production, past or future. She marries a Dutchman of old stock and even older habits, idiosyncrasies, emotional dynamics and humanity. For the first and last time in her life she will capitulate to another’s desires, and utter, albeit reluctantly, the anathema ‘yes’. From that moment on, she will exert full powers of domination over the smaller and wider constellations of her world with an iron fist – or rather with the occasional slipper and an endlessly reappearing, seemingly imperishable rolling pin.
An Indian rolling pin (or velun) is long, thin and tapered at the ends, so that rotis and poppadoms can be thin, silky, delectably brittle. Mama Tandoori must make do with the shorter, stockier, more inelegant Western version, just as she must make do with so many other, more or less ineffective, substitutes for her Indian disposition and perception of the world. And yet, each time, through hell and high water, she manages to achieve almost perfect harmonies, swooning Indian dishes, a concentric universe that even at its most outrageously extreme has never fallen apart. Mama Tandoori leads a chameleonic existence between ‘Mrs van der Kwast’ and her Indian soul, yet if the skin colour reflects alterations of appearance and circumstances, the dissimulations required by cultural and psychological survival, it will never reflect any alteration of the heart. To the very last page, Mama Tandoori remains indomitably charming, frighteningly endearing, ruthlessly indispensable.
Reviewed by Mika Provata-Carlone
Mama Tandoori
Written by Ernest van der Kwast
Translated by Laura Vroomen
Published by Scribe (August 2017)