DE WOONGROEP (THE COMMUNE)

Find your calling! Do something with your life! But what can you do when someone else could just as easily do your work and you have no unique talent?

In the kitchen cupboard I found a jar of olives. ‘Look, this is me!' I walk back to the couch and screw off the lid. I gape into the jar and quickly close it. With my fingers on the lid I wave it in Erik's face. ‘Here: Elenoor Fontanel, 28-year-old Content Manager.' Erik thinks he can provide a fuller life for his girlfriend Elenoor: he wants to move in together and have children, but Elenoor applies, instead, to live in an idealistic commune, situated in a former orphanage in Amsterdam-East. Because, what better way to feel more at home in the world than by trying to better it? In The Commune Franca Treur focuses on a group of young, well-educated urbanites. Winners and losers, heroes and saints, moochers and man-eaters – all of them in their own way looking for something bigger than themselves. Franca Treur (1979) grew up as a farmer's daughter on the Dutch island of Walcheren, in the province of Zeeland. She studied Dutch and Literary Sciences at the University of Leiden. In 2006 she won an essay competition hosted by the magazine Contrast and the newspaper Nrc.next. Her first novel, Confetti on the Threshing Floor, was nominated for numerous prizes. Franca Treur writes for NRC Handelsblad and Nrc.next.