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Charlotte van den Broeck at Boswell

Imagine being an architect when your theatre collapses mid-performance in 1920s Washington or the designer of an eerily sinking swimming pool in your home town. Charlotte Van den Broeck, award-winning Belgian poet, goes in search of buildings that were fatal for their architects - architects who either killed themselves or are rumoured to have done so. The reason? Because the buildings they created were flawed; because of public disgrace; or because creativity inevitably has a dark side.

Bold Ventures: 13 Tales of Architectural Tragedy

From a church with a twisted spire built in seventeenth-century France, and ranging across time and space whilst drawing on material from Hegel and Charles Darwin to art history, Van den Broeck asks: what is that strange life-or-death connection between a creation and its creator?

Bold Ventures, a prize-winning and idiosyncratic book, breaks new ground in literary non-fiction and provides solace, consolation - and a note of caution - to anyone risking their hand at a creative act.

In conversation with Sheena McDonald

In cooperation with Flanders Literature

About the author(s)

Charlotte Van den Broeck (b. 1991) is a Belgian novelist and poet. Van den Broeck was acclaimed as one of Europe's most innovative and original new voices in poetry. Her debut volume Chameleon was published in 2015, with its sequel Nachtroer two years later. These two volumes are combined in...
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Tags

non-fiction

14 May