PAUL BINNERTS
new book
LABYRINTH OF LIES

A MOVING AND UNUSUAL WAR NOVEL ABOUT ORDINARY JEWISH PEOPLE AND
THEIR IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES

.

The Hague, May 9th 1940. Bert Meijer van Leer becomes the proud owner of a German motorbike. Little does he know that the motorbike, a Zündapp, will save his life and cause his downfall. On May 10th the German army invades Holland. On that day Emmeke, Bert’s sister, celebrates her birthday. Emmeke and Bert are Jewish, but not practicing. Bert has been baptized and marries Lien who is Protestant. Emmeke is married to Joost, who isn’t Jewish either and anti-religious out of principle. Ingredients for a fatal chain of events.

Their ‘mixed marriages’ can’t protect them against the measures the Germans take against the Jews: excluding them from the society they live in through registration and public humiliation by forcing them to wear the Star of David; and, if they don’t comply, arrest, imprisonment, and deportation to a concentration camp.

In Labyrinth of Lies, Paul Binnerts witnesses how the Nazi’s slowly tighten the rope around the necks of his characters. They are constantly facing decisions, which only in retrospect turned out to be the wrong decisions. He deeply sympathizes with them but can only keep them company.

Published: 2021 by Prometheus, Amsterdam.
The title, Het Leugenlabyrint, translates into English as Labyrinth of Lies. An
English translation is in preparation.

PAUL BINNERTS

Dutch theater director, acting teacher, playwright and novelist.

Situated in New York and Amsterdam. His plays Black Box, The Same Sea (based on novels by Amos Oz) and Mephisto (based on the novel by Klaus Mann) won prestigious awards in Europe. The Same Sea was produced in Toni Morrison’s Atelier at Princeton University in 2004.

Published ACTING IN REAL TIME, Univ. of Michigan Press in 2012.

A VERY (c)OLD CASE, Part 1 and 2: first original play in English. Reading Part 1 @ Lark Theater, NYC, 2011.

LOST & FOUND: second original play in English, directed @ Westbeth by Nancy Gabor.

Directed over 75 productions in Holland, UK, Germany, US and Japan.

Taught ‘real time acting’ @ drama schools in Holland, Germany, the UK and the US, including Princeton and NYU.

Published his novel LABYRINTH OF LIES in Holland in 2021

www.paulbinnerts.nl
paulbinnerts@hotmail.com