Crackling Skulls

Roger van de Velde, born in Boom, Belgium, in 1925, was a journalist and author. At the age of twenty-one, he suffered a gastric perforation after which he was prescribed the highly addictive opioid Palfium. Due to his subsequent drug dependence, he was charged with the possession of forged medical prescriptions and spent six years of his short life in psychiatric institutions, where he wrote this volume of stories about his fellow inmates. In twenty laconic, funny and moving stories he describes his »compagnons de misère« with empathy and astuteness. The stories were smuggled from the institution by van de Velde’s wife and published in secret. Van de Velde died from an accidental overdose in 1970.

Each story is dedicated to a patient: there is Jules Leroy, who kills his beloved cat because it stole his weekly steak – which he loved even more, or »Scraps-and-tatters«, who scampers through the institution naked, or the newcomer, who bears a tattoo of the ominous phrase »Margaritas ante porcos« on his lower arm and wants to cure van de Velde of his addiction to painkillers – one of the rare moments in which the author reveals insights into his own disorder. Van de Velde’s language seems pleasantly anachronistic (which was also true at the time the book was written), and he comes off as an urbane and eloquent narrator who has as much interest in elegant turns of phrase as in the fate of his comrades in suffering.

»This book should be in every library of every institution. Actually, it should be in every library full stop.« Tobias Lehmkuhl, Deutschlandfunk

»The king of the short story.« Dimitri Verhulst

»Penetrating and splendid, full of brilliant, somewhat harrowing images.« NRC Handelsblad

»Top-flight prose written in a smooth, sober style.« Cutting Edge