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Book 1 of The Night Travellers
Omaria
magical realism · literary fiction
Sinne does not steer. She suggests. Her vessel interprets.
For readers of García Márquez, Ursula K. Le Guin, Isabel Allende and Haruki Murakami.
The camp
By day, she survives the merciless life in a post-war refugee camp.
Omaria
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 what they cannot understand. But the dark Mara, whose magic runs through both worlds, has plans that reach far beyond anything 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 escaping — but in returning?
A novel about adventure, transcendent love, and the light that becomes visible when you have the courage to truly look.
Order
Order the paperback — € 24.95 Buy the e‑book — € 4.50The paperback is printed especially for you and delivered via boekenbestellen.nl; the e‑book (EPUB) comes straight to your inbox. The Dutch original is also available, as a paperback and an e‑book, in the store.
Follow the journey
Follow the travelling books #omariareistdoor Ask the narrator a question Follow along by newsletterOne letter a week, and the first news about Noah, book two.
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. More readers in the store.
The four images
Omaria did not begin with a sentence, but with four works of art. The book is the journey it took to discover what they already knew.
More work 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. There were four works 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.
I wrote Omaria in Dutch. I made this English edition myself, working with AI and a human proofreader, so that the story could travel further.
For questions about my writing, interviews or collaborations: xandra@dupper.nl