'It sounds dreadful,' I said to him one day. 'But actually the war is the best thing that ever happened to me.' Helena's mother always said she was a born poetess. It was not a compliment. Now an old woman, Helena looks back on her life and tries to capture the past, filling notebook after notebook with memories of her respectable, rigid upbringing, her unyielding mother, her loyal father, her golden-haired brother. She remembers how, at their uncle's country house in the summer of 1914, their stately bourgeois life of good manners, white linen and afternoon tea collapsed into ruins. And how, with war, came a kind of liberation amidst the mud and rubble-and the appearance of a young English photographer who transformed her existence. Lyrical and tender, filled with images of blazing intensity, While the Gods Were Sleeping asks how it is possible to record the dislocation of war; to describe the indescribable. It is a breathtaking novel about the act of remembering, how the past seeps into our lives and how those we have lost leave their trace in the present.

Mortier writes so well that you are inclined to see everything else as of secondary importance NRC Handelsblad Sumptuously imagined Independent (Books of the Year) Almost too beautiful a writer... the footprint of Proust visible on every page Financial Times A monumental, phenomenal book De Morgen Splendid control of language de Volkskrant A beautifully unorthodox novel of the Great War... a kaleidoscopic palette Independent Visceral and heart-stopping... deeply and painfully moving... one of the finest war stories ever written NewBooks An astonishing book... leads us deep into everyday life during the First World War. and does this so impressively that it seems the author has experienced it himself. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung If Marcel Proust had a descendant somewhere in Flanders, he must have been born in Ghent. Knack Sumptuously lyrical We Love This Book The author skilfully reconstructs the crepuscular atmosphere of an era that ends with the shipwreck of a civilisation, but, paradoxically, also with the sensual awakening of a young girl. Figaro Threads the heavy folds of history with the needle of poetic sensibility Livres hebdo 'Multi-layered' is too bland a word for this subtle, sophisticated novel, which moves between different times with such aplomb that the reader never loses the thread. Buchmarkt With tenderness and skill, Mortier crafts assured novels brimming with quiet optimism despite their often somber subjects. To have them now translated and available in the United States all at once is a generous treat -- Dave Wheeler Shelf Awareness Mortier writes stories that stick and characters whose oblique relationship to normalcy lodge themselves in our minds like splinters... a quintessential and literally definitive work of Belgian literature National Post

Erwin Mortier (1965) made his mark in 1999 with his debut novel Marcel, which was awarded several prizes in Belgium and the Netherlands, and received acclaim throughout Europe. In the following years he quickly built up a reputation as of one the leading authors of his generation. His novel While the Gods were Sleeping received the AKO Literature Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the Netherlands. His latest work, Stammered Songbook: A Mother's Book of Hours, a raw yet tender elegy about illness and loss, was met with unanimous praise. Mortier's evocative descriptions bring past worlds brilliantly to life.