{"id":1595,"date":"2025-05-06T11:23:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T09:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/?post_type=blog&p=1595"},"modified":"2025-05-22T13:41:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T11:41:34","slug":"a-word-from-the-librarian","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/blog\/a-word-from-the-librarian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Writers\u2019 Hotel \u2013 A word from the librarian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Writers\u2019 Hotel \u2013 A word from the librarian<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The Ambassade Hotel is renowned as the place to stay in Amsterdam for writers. All the big Dutch publishers book rooms here for their authors \u2013 much to the gratitude of the hotel, which has been able to assemble an amazing book collection thanks to all its literary guests. The library currently holds an astonishing 5000 signed books offering a cross section of the entire range of contemporary literature.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\nThe books are housed in the Library Bar and Library Lounge, which were completed in 2015. The person with responsibility for the library is Eelco Douma, who has been working at the Ambassade Hotel for 25 years. He\u2019s proud of the collection and well aware that it wouldn\u2019t have been possible without the publishers.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s extraordinary how the collection has developed. Publishers traditionally had their offices on Herengracht, and they book rooms with us for their authors. The hotel always receives a signed copy of their latest work. Because the writers keep coming back, from some of them we have their entire oeuvre. Take novelists like Arnon Grunberg and Gy\u00f6rgy Konr\u00e1d for instance, or non-fiction authors like Ian Buruma and Philipp Blom. We have work by authors from 76 countries, and our Belgian neighbours in particular are close to our hearts. Tom Lanoye and Dimitri Verhulst are regular guests, for example. Verhulst actually devoted two pages to us in his book to mark the 2015 Dutch literature week!\u2019<\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

\nThe guestbooks<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In the Library Bar there are also 20 guestbooks with valuable contributions and reflections by famous guests. \u2018They include internationally renowned writers, among them virtually every winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature over the past 30 years, as well as politicians, philosophers, and even a balloon pilot. There are various notes in the guestbooks by authors like Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie, David Sedaris, Connie Palmen, Eckhart Tolle, Mario Vargas Llosa, Umberto Eco, and Jonathan Safran Foer.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018The writer and former chief editor of the magazine Vrij Nederland, Rinus Ferdinandusse, used to come to the hotel sometimes to interview a guest, and one day he said, \u2018Do you know who\u2019s sitting over there in the corner of the lobby?\u2019 It turned out to be John le Carr\u00e9, whom we hadn\u2019t recognised because he\u2019d reserved under his real name, David Cornwell. From then on, Le Carr\u00e9 stayed here regularly. I still have a handwritten letter from him thanking me for the Christmas gift we send him every year and saying he has such \u2018fond memories\u2019 of the Ambassade Hotel. I\u2019ll always cherish that letter.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Just before my time, though from the stories it sounds very impressive, there was a visit from the famous writer Alberto Moravia, \u00e9minence grise of Italian literature. It was as if the Pope was visiting, he was given so much attention and respect. Things are different these days; the top Italian author today, Paolo Giordano, is very relaxed and greets me like an old friend when he stays with us.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\u2018Something that made a big impression on me a year ago was a visit by Nadya Tolokonnikova of the punk band Pussy Riot, who was here because of her book \u2018How to Start a Revolution\u2019. Usually I wouldn\u2019t take such a liberty, but when I saw her sitting in the library I went up to her and said that I think she\u2019s extremely courageous and she should keep up her fight.\u2019<\/p>\n

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The writers\u2019 hotel:<\/strong><\/em>
\nFor a period of six months, a different author is invited to stay at the Ambassade Hotel for two nights every week. The author will write a column about their experience of being a writer in this era. The columns will be published weekly in the Dutch newspaper \u2018Het Parool\u2019.<\/em><\/h4>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"featured_media":1277,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true},"blog_category":[],"class_list":["post-1595","blog","type-blog","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog\/1595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"blog_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog_category?post=1595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}