literature

‘A Liberating Eruption’: Anja Meulenbelt Receives the 2026 P.C. Hooft Prize

The P.C. Hooft Prize for expository prose, the most prestigious Dutch lifetime achievement award for literature, will in 2026 be presented for the first time to a woman: Anja Meulenbelt. In 1976 Meulenbelt made her breakthrough with De schaamte voorbij (The Shame is Over), her best-known book, which continues to resonate with new generations. Throughout her oeuvre she has always adopted an explicitly political stance. The jury therefore describes Meulenbelt’s language as “directly engaged and consciously subjective”.

Anja Meulenbelt (Utrecht, 1945) reacted with surprise when she heard the news: “This can’t be right at all, that was my first thought – I’m far too controversial for this prize. I’ve rarely been regarded as someone who played a role in literature. At the same time, I know that my work really does matter. I know who read my books and what they meant to them. And still do, because there is a sort of revival going on. Winning this prize may well be a consequence of that.”

The jury characterises Meulenbelt’s oeuvre as “consciously subjective”: “Meulenbelt is deeply aware that describing always takes place from a position, from a body onto which meanings are imposed on the basis of class, gender, ethnicity and health, and from a mind governed by taboos, ideology, and the washing-up that still needs doing,” the jury writes. “The language Meulenbelt begins to develop in De schaamte voorbij (1976) is therefore not detached, analytical and apparently neutral, but directly engaged, synthesising and consciously subjective.”

Meulenbelt’s oeuvre spans half a century and comprises books, articles, lectures, speeches, interviews, pamphlets, posts and commentaries. The autobiography De schaamte voorbij marked her definitive breakthrough as an author. In addition, Meulenbelt was active in the women’s movement and had a political career, including as a member of the Senate for the Socialist Party.

In the 1980s Meulenbelt, together with several other women writers, established the Anna Bijns Prize. They did so out of dissatisfaction with the structural disadvantaging of women in the awarding of literary prizes. The fact that she herself is now receiving the P.C. Hooft Prize for her oeuvre shows that times are changing.

“The past cannot – as Meulenbelt has repeatedly shown in her work – be corrected, only worked through, in order to make a better future possible. The nomination of Meulenbelt is intended as a liberating eruption, a salutary rupture that creates room for very many new possibilities,” said the jury.

The jury calls De schaamte voorbij one of the few politically outspoken and innovative books from the 1970s that, as of 2025, has not been consigned to the category of curiosities gathering dust from an irrevocable era. New generations still pick it up. The jury praises the book’s “direct, raw and staccato style”. “Anyone attempting to describe the beauty of that style will sooner end up with comparisons to Janis Joplin than to Maria Callas, and with words such as ‘sparkling’ and ‘energetic’ rather than ‘refined’. But refinement is hardly to be expected in a book in which so much had to be broken open, in which so much had to be named that had previously remained unsayable.”

Meulenbelt remains deeply fond of her craft. This autumn saw the publication of Niet van gisteren. Memoires maar dan anders (Not Born Yesterday: Memoirs, But Different), in which the personal is still political.

“Writing has always been a fantastic way for me to keep myself together a little. To understand where I live and what is going on. It saves on a psychiatrist, I sometimes say. Above all, I’m delighted to notice how many people appreciate my work. I often hear ‘you say what I think’, and I consider that a tremendous compliment. That the most prestigious literary prize in the Netherlands has now been awarded to me for this – I truly would never have expected it from any jury.”

The Literature Museum will host the festive presentation of the P.C. Hooft Prize in May, around the anniversary of P.C. Hooft’s death. The prize carries an award of 60,000 euros.

• P.C. Hooft Award