ON THE WATER
A widely acclaimed novel about a sporting companionship shattered by war, now ripe
for adaptation as feature film.
LOGLINE:
Poor, shy Anton and rich, confident David, team up in a successful rowing crew in
1930s Amsterdam: but World War II shatters their Olympic dreams, threatens their
survival, and separates Anton from Rachel, David’s bright, beautiful sister.
GENRE:
Period drama of sporting success, wartime loss, and love across boundaries
SETTING:
Amsterdam, in the golden summers just before WWII began - and the freezing winter
just before it ended.
Reference Films:
Miracle, Field of Dreams, Any Given Sunday
THEME:
The storms of war threaten to snuff out a young man’s flickering hopes - but the fuel
of friendship and the breath of love make them flame anew.
On the Water by Hans Maarten van den Brink was published in Holland in 1998
(Dutch title; Over het Water). An English translation by Paul Vincent was published in
the UK and USA in 2001, garnering good sales, award nominations, and excellent
reviews.
The book made the following award lists:
LA Times Best Book
Libris Literatuur Prijs
Prix Medicis Etranger
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
IMPAC Dublin Award
2001
1999 - shortlist
2001 - nominated
2002 - shortlist
2003 – longlist
REVIEWS:
Amongst the English language reviews are:
A brilliant sports novel which provides a new spin on the theme of male
bonding. With positive evocations of place, it has a quiet and sustained power.
IMPAC Dublin
An impressively sustained evocation of a lost time and lost happiness...On the
Water has in intensity which a more conventiolnal story would lack…. A daring first
novel which rewards us with a convincingly distilled vision of a vanished moment.
(London)Times Literary Supplement
A marvelous book in every respect…an impeccable, profound and subtle
piece of writing…
(London) Daily Mail
Powerful tale of romantic regret…
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The arduous sport of rowing is an apt metaphor not only for life but for the
ache of memory, which comes forth and retreats like waves… In beautifully vivid
writing van den Brink describes the grace, ecstasy and agony of rowing, the miracle
of its teamwork harmony.
Washington Post
This is an artful meditation on the out-of-time, out-of-body experience of
intense training and competition and of the transformations of bodies and souls.
The Los Angeles Times
On the Water has a cumulative power, ultimately suggesting how the innocent
can be guilty too -- how just living your life can make you blind to bigger concerns
until it's too late. Books like Van den Brink's … remind you that the best historical
novels use the ample resources of fiction to illustrate not what the past looked like
but what it might have meant.
New York Magazine
Rarely have sport and literature combined so seamlessly to produce such an
absorbing and satisfying novel as this small miracle of a book.
(Daniel Topolski – see below) (London) Guardian
Here is a writer whose mind's eye sees the world from behind the lens of a
camera. In fact, the word ''cinematic'' comes to the reader's own mind repeatedly
over the course of H. M. van den Brink's slender novel about a young rower's magical
summer in pre-war Amsterdam.
Chris Solomon, NY Times
The author has been writing for the Dutch daily “NRC-Handelsblad” since 1982, living
for a time in Spain and the USA as a foreign correspondent. He has also been editorin-chief for the Dutch television station VPRO. On the Water is his second novel.
ENDORSEMENT
Daniel Topolski is well-known as world champion oarsman, long term coach of
Oxford University Boat Club, and commentator on rowing for TV and radio. He has
also written extensively about rowing, with his book True Blue: Oxford Boat Race
Mutiny winning the William Hill UK Sports Book of the Year in 1989. He acted as
technical advisor on the 1996 film based on his book, as well as the 1984 film Oxford
Blues, also set in the rowing world and starring Rob Lowe.
He is familiar with the book, having reviewed it for the Guardian; he’s met the author;
and he coached the screenwriter, Stephen Potts in the 1981 Oxford rowing squad.
He offers the following endorsement:
As a rower and coach, I am delighted with how On the Water captures the
raw authenticity of being out on the river under extreme pressure in mid stroke. As a
writer I loved the lyrical spare prose and the multi levelled story lines about coming of
age in 1930's Europe, of friendship across the class and ethnic divide and the
difficulties of excelling at a complex sport to the background drumbeat of impending
war.
It offers great potential as a screenplay if the audience can be made to care
deeply about the characters. If they do, they will consequently engage fully with the
characters' passion - rowing. That's the key to the success of all movies about sport especially lesser known sports like rowing.
FILM RIGHTS
Stephen Potts, the screenwriter, has secured from the publisher an exclusive option
on the English language film rights.
SCREENWRITER
In 2007 Stephen Potts adapted Philip Pullman’s novel The Butterfly Tattoo as an
independent feature film. Pullman publicly commended the project - and particularly
the script. The film went on to win 4 awards at international film festivals, including
one for Best Adaptation in New York in 2008. On DVD release it reached 75 on
IMDb’s Moviemeter.
As well as writing for the screen, he has scripted drama for BBC Radio and the
stage in Edinburgh and London, and is an established author, with seven published
children’s novels.
When he is not writing, Stephen works as a psychiatrist in Edinburgh’s Royal
Infirmary, mainly in the Emergency Room and Transplant services. He has extensive
experience in rowing, having represented Oxford (Isis) in the University Boat Race,
when he was coached by Dan Topolski, He has raced on the river Amstel in
Amsterdam, the setting for On The Water.