On 8 January 2026, author Astrid Roemer (1947-2026) died in Paramaribo at the age of 78. Roemer was an important voice in Dutch Caribbean literature. Her rich body of work includes novels, collections of poetry and short stories, novellas and plays, including Over de gekte van een vrouw.
On 8 January 2026, author Astrid Roemer (1947-2026) died in Paramaribo at the age of 78. Roemer was an important voice in Dutch Caribbean literature. Her rich body of work includes novels, collections of poetry and short stories, novellas and plays, including Over de gekte van een vrouw.
Astrid Heligonda Roemer was born on 27 April 1947 in Paramaribo, Suriname. She came from a family of three girls and a boy, of which she was the eldest child. In 1966, Roemer left for the Netherlands to complete her education in education. After living alternately in Suriname and the Netherlands, she moved permanently to the Netherlands in 1975.
The central theme in Roemer's work was described by cultural anthropologist Roline Redmond in Language, Power and Culture (1993) as "the search for self; a quest in which personal and social obstacles, such as racism and sexism, must be overcome." She made her debut in 1970 with the poetry collection Sasa, under the pseudonym Zamani. Her first novel Take Me Back Suriname was published in Paramaribo in 1974, which she rewrote in 1983 under the title Nowhere Anywhere. In 1982, Roemer broke through in the Netherlands with the novel Over de gekte van een vrouw. It is about the struggle of a young woman who gradually becomes isolated from her social environment. The English translation of the novel On a Woman's Madness was nominated for the US National Book Award in 2023.
"The trilogy of novels published by Astrid Roemer in the last years of the 20th century - published in one volume in 2001 under the umbrella title Roemer's triplets - is widely recognised as the author's magnum opus."
Roemer incorporated the fight against sexism and racism not only in her female main characters. It was also reflected in literary workshops, interviews and readings, as in The Chocolate Manifesto, which she read at the fourth Women's Festival in the Amsterdam Melkweg in 1982 and began as follows:
"We Black Women who live and work in the so-called Rich Countries, but know our souls rooted in the so-called Poor Countries, are daily confronted with phenomena of the divine phenomenon called Feminism."
In 2016, Roemer received the P.C. Hooft Prize for her oeuvre. The jury praised Roemer for her novels, in which she combines political engagement with experimental forms. In 2021, she was awarded the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren. This made Roemer the first Surinamese author to receive this award. However, the official presentation did not go ahead due to Roemer's controversial statements about former army chief Desi Bouterse, who had been convicted for the December killings in Suriname in 1982.
Literature by Astrid Roemer
Over de gekte van een vrouw (1982)
Nergens ergens (herziene druk 1984)
En wat dan nog? Liederatuur (1985)
NoordzeeBlues (1985)
Levenslang gedicht (1987)
Oost West Holland best (1989)
Gewaagd leven (1996)
Lijken op liefde (1997)
Was getekend (1998)
Liefde in tijden van gebrek (2016)
