The Hairdresser's Son

International Dublin Literary Award–winning Gerbrand Bakker gives voice to the visceral power of family ties in a novel brimming with Knausgaardian detail

When his wife tells him she is pregnant, Cornelis packs his bags and boards a plane—a day later he is dead. Now grown, Simon roams the barbershop his father left him, honing razors and polishing mirrors in a shop marked FERMÉ. He sees his customers one by one, massaging scalps and shaving throats in an intimate, physical dance. There’s onl...