Our evenings combine a lecture or reading by the invited guest and a discussion on stage with our specially selected moderator. Add in questions from the audience and we can promise a fascinating and lively discussion! Our events are hosted at various locations in Amsterdam. Check each event announcement for location.
Nicole Krauss
| Forest Dark
Aug 29, 2017, 8:00 pm -
9:30 pm,
Compagnietheater, Kloveniersburgwal 50
Bestselling American novelist Nicole Krauss will join the John Adams Institute to discuss her new novel Forest Dark, translated as Donker Woud by Ambo Anthos. The New York Times describes Krauss as "one of America’s most important novelists", and is best known for her novel The History of Love. Forest Dark is a story about the personal transformation of two dissimilar characters, an older lawyer and a young novelist, whose paths lead them to the same Israeli desert. Krauss embraces ... Read more
Mohsin Hamid
| Exit West
Sep 12, 2017, 8:00 pm -
9:30 pm,
De Duif, Prinsengracht 756
We are happy to announce that Mohsin Hamid is returning to The John Adams Institute, this time to discuss his new novel Exit West, also translated and published as Exit West by De Bezige Bij. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet and fall in love. The sensual and fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. When the violence in their city explodes, they begin to hear whispers ... Read more
Happiest Kids in the World
| Rina May Acosta and Michele Hutchison
Sep 18, 2017, 8:00 pm -
9:30 pm,
International School of Amsterdam, Sportlaan 45, Amstelveen
Dutch children are the happiest kids in the world, according to UNICEF studies of child well-being in 2007 and 2013. Why is that? Is the Dutch approach to parenting really that different? In their book The Happiest Kids in the World, American writer Rina May Acosta and British writer Michele Hutchison - both married to Dutchmen and raising their kids in the Netherlands - share the secrets of Dutch parenting. The Dutch see happiness as a means to success, whereas many see success as the way to happiness. But are there ... Read more
Dan Brown – Sold Out
| Origin
Oct 22, 2017, 3:00 pm -
4:30 pm,
Paradiso, Weteringschans 6-8, 1017 SG Amsterdam
Dan Brown, the world’s most popular thriller writer, returns to the John Adams to discuss his new novel Origin, translated into Dutch as De Oorsprong by Luitingh Sijthoff. Unfolding entirely in Spain —Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Bilbao, the home of the Guggenheim Museum —Origin thrusts Harvard symbologist Langdon into the intersection of two of humankind’s most enduring questions: Where do we come from? Where are we going?
Origin follows Brown’s other Langdon thrillers: The Da Vinci ... Read more
Colson Whitehead
| The Underground Railroad
Dec 06, 2017, 8:00 pm -
9:30 pm,
De Rode Hoed, Keizersgracht 102, Amsterdam
Colson Whitehead is the biggest literary sensation of this decade. He was the first author since Annie Proulx to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his novel The Underground Railroad (translated as De Ondergrondse Spoorweg by Atlas Contact). Several prominent figures also declared it their favorite novel, including President Obama. Written with “deadpan virtuosity ... Read more
Amsterdam Stories
| Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck
Dec 11, 2017, 8:00 pm -
9:30 pm,
De Balie, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10
Have the Netherlands left a mark on the US? Come find out on December 11th, when the Belgian filmmakers Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck show a compilation of their road movie in which they take you all across the continent to visit all the American places named Amsterdam. On their journey through cities, towns, streets and parishes they go in search of those experiences and smalltown stories that reveal an untold America. In each Amsterdam, we meet key figures who offer a picture of America's past and present ... Read more