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OMARIA
Book 1 of The Night Travellers
MAGICAL REALISM | LITERARY FICTION
Sinne does not steer. She suggests. Her vessel interprets.
By day, she survives the merciless life in a post-war refugee camp. By night, she enters Omaria — a world where clouds are little islands, where time is layered like memories, and where everything you feel takes tangible form.
There she meets Toran. Not the hardened camp commander she fears by day, but a deposed king, trapped in his own flight. Together they navigate a world that challenges them to trust in what they cannot understand. But the dark Mara, whose magic seeps through both worlds, has plans that reach far beyond what they suspect.
What if the place you flee to is more real than the world you leave behind? And what if the key to freedom lies not in escape — but in return?
A novel about adventure, transcendent love and the light that becomes visible when you have the courage to truly see.
For readers of García Márquez, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isabel Allende and Haruki Murakami.
The preview holds the foreword, the prologue and the first chapter. The English edition carries the four original artworks at the places where they first appear in the story.
E‑book (EPUB), delivered straight away with a download link by email. Pay with iDEAL or card. Reading Dutch? The Dutch edition is also available in paperback.
What readers say
While I read, a film plays in my head at the same time. The writer takes you by the hand now and then, and seems to sense what is going on in your mind as you read — you hardly ever see that in a book. I’m looking forward to the sequel.
The passages about the camp are hard for me, because I don’t like reading about grief — and at the same time I find them beautifully rendered. The part about life on the clouds, in an almost perfect paradise, is something very special to read. Something to drift away in, and for a while to count as part of your own reality.
For me it is not only a beautifully imagined story, it is a metaphor for life. For everyone’s life. For my life. The darkness of the camp and its hopelessness, and against it the light of Omaria and its unimagined possibilities.
Translated from Dutch and shared with the readers’ permission.
The four images
Omaria did not begin with a sentence, but with four works of art. The book is the journey it took to find out what they knew.
More of my work is in the portfolio.
About the book
I am a visual artist, and this book began the way my work always begins: with images whose meaning I did not yet know. Four works lay on the table, and writing turned out to be the way to find out. What grew from them is a story about two worlds that mirror each other — a camp where everything is fixed and a world where everything is in motion — and about the question of which of the two is the real one. It became a first journey. More will follow.
For questions about my writing, interviews or collaborations: xandra@dupper.nl