| Title of the Novel/Novella/Play | Author’s Name | Water Body Name | Water Body Type | Publication Details | Year of Publiction | Genre | Theme | Summary | English Translation | Translator | Language |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| We, the Drowned (Vi, de druknede) | Carstsen Jensen | Baltic Sea, North Sea, Arctic Sea, Tasman Sea, Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean | Sea, Ocean | Gyldendal | 2006 | Novel | Story of the inhabitants of the Danish port city Marstal, spanning almost a century, about their history and culture of seafaring across the world. | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011 | Danish | ||
| Memoirs of Governor Loten | Joan Gideon Loten | Indian Ocean | Ocean | Published in edited form by Dutch colonial archives and translated editions (not commercially published during his lifetime). | 1752 | Memoir / Travel account | The Memoirs of Governor Loten present the thoughts of Joan Gideon Loten, a governor for the Dutch East India Company, in Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon). This personal memoir combines personal narrative with colonial observance and depicts the maritime and administrative practices of the 18th century. Loten’s writings demonstrate the complexities of Dutch imperial governance and mattered for Springer’s engagement with neighboring societies, as well as the moral and cultural representations and tensions affiliated with colonialism. | Dutch | |||
| Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (Old and New East Indies) | François Valentyn | Indian Ocean | Ocean | Joannes van Braam in Dordrecht and Gerard onder de Linden in Amsterdam. | 1724 and 1726. | Historical chronicle / Travel narrative | Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën is heralded as one of the earliest and most detailed accounts of the Dutch colonial presence within Asia, with a particular focus on colonial Sri Lanka. The text combines locking observation with reports that Valentijn collected from others and offers descriptions of ports, trade, and cultural life throughout the Indian Ocean. The text functions as a part encyclopedic resource for geography and a historical account of the VOC’s maritime empire. Although it carries an obvious bias from a colonial perspective, it remains highly useful for examining aspects of navigation and commerce. | Dutch | |||
| Reize te voet door het eiland Ceilon (Travels on Foot through the Island of Ceylon) | Jacob Gotfried Haafner | Indian Ocean | Ocean | Published posthumously by his son in Amsterdam in 1810, following Haafner’s death in 1809. | 1810 | Travelogue | In Travels on Foot through the Island of Ceylon, Dutch traveler Jacob Haafner assembles a lively narrative of his travels around the coastal areas and backgrounds of the island. He is careful and concerned with paying attention to tropical scenery, to navigating a route by the sea, and local ways. Haafner’s writing enlivens the beauty of Ceylon with its tropical forests and palm trees amidst the suffering of others under colonialism. He has a humanist perspective to his writing and critiques the arrogance of Europeans. In this respect, he is an early anti-colonial voice. | Dutch | |||
| De Tienduizend Dingen | Maria Dermout | Sea | Sea | D.A. Daamen’s Uitgeversmaatschappij | 1955 | Novel | The novel follows Felicia, who returns from Europe to her birthplace on a remote Indonesian island after her husband leaves her. She lives with her powerful grandmother and raises her son in the house and garden where she was born. Felicia and her family are entangled in the island’s haunting past, filled with ghosts and legends. The narrative also incorporates other tragic island tales, all of which culminate in Felicia’s annual ritual of mourning the dead and affirming life. The story explores how the characters cope with loss and violence in a world where the living and dead are deeply interconnected. | Yes(The Ten Thousand Things) | Hans Koning. | Dutch | |
| Hollands Glorie | Jan de Hartog | North Sea | Sea | De Arbeiderspers / later Uitgeverij Rubinstein editions. | 1940 | Novel | Maritime labour, masculinity, class, industrialisation, solidarity | The novel follows Dutch ocean-going tugboat crews and their dangerous work rescuing ships. | Captain Jan (1947) | Carlos Peacock | Dutch |
| Sil de Strandjutter (Sil the Beachcomber) | Cor Bruijn | North Sea | Sea | G.F. Callenbach (1940). | 1940 | Novel | Island community, fishing, religion, sexuality, survival. | Set on Terschelling, the novel depicts an island community whose social and economic existence is inseparable from the sea. | – | – | Dutch |
| The Little Ark | Jan de Hartog | North Sea | Sea | Harper (1953). | 1953 | Novel | Flood, childhood, survival, human solidarity. | Inspired by the 1953 North Sea flood, the novel follows children caught in a catastrophic inundation. | – | – | English |
| Stella (The Distant Shore) | Jan de Hartog | North Atlantic/ North Sea | sea | Harper & Brothers / Harper editions. | 1951 | Novel | Sailors, war, masculinity, danger, love. | A maritime novel centred on sailors and the dangers of wartime sea transport. | – | – | English |
| The Lost Sea | Jan de Hartog | Open Sea | sea | Harper (1951); later Hamish Hamilton (1957). | 1951 | Novel | Maritime labour, isolation, survival and memory. | Based on de Hartog’s experiences aboard ships, it belongs to the author’s sustained attempt to represent the psychological and bodily realities of life at sea. | – | – | English |
| The Captain | Jan de Hartog | Atlantic/ Pacific/ Global Ocean | ocean | Atheneum (1966) | 1966 | Novel | Authority, masculinity, maritime community, survival. | A large-scale maritime narrative concerned with the captain’s relationship with crew, ship and sea | – | – | English |
| The Commodore | Jan de Hartog | Ocean | ocean | Atheneum / later English-language editions by HarperCollins. | 1986 | Novel | Ageing, authority, navigation, maritime culture. | male identity is constructed through mastery or attempted mastery of the sea. | – | – | English |
| De verdronkene (The Drowned) | Margriet de Moor | North Sea | sea | Contact (2005); later De Bezige Bij. English: Knopf (2010) | 2005 | Novel | Flood, sisterhood, mortality, memory, female identity. | The novel begins on the eve of the 1953 Dutch flood disaster and follows two sisters whose lives are radically transformed by the catastrophe. | – | – | Dutch |
| Zee Nu | Eva Meijer | North Sea | Sea | Cossee, Uitgeverij | 2022 | Novel | Climate change, ecological collapse, displacement, nonhuman agency. | The North Sea rises and simply does not retreat, eventually submerging the Netherlands. Human beings become climate refugees. | Sea Now | Anne Thompson Melo | Dutch |
| Weerwater (Water Again) | Renate Dorrestein | Weerwater | Artificial waterbody | Uitgeverij Podium (2015) | 2015 | Novel | Female community, catastrophe, social reconstruction, gender. | A flooded-city novel in which women become central to the rebuilding of social life. | – | – | English |
| Het verboden rijk | J. Slauerhoff | Pacific Ocean | Ocean | Nijgh & Van Ditmar; English translation: Pushkin Press | 1932 | Novel | Colonialism, travel, identity, cultural displacement. | Slauerhoff’s maritime imagination repeatedly connects oceanic movement with alienation and cultural dislocation. | The Forbidden Kingdom | Paul Vincet | Dutch |
| Sea Stories | J. Slauerhoff | Ocean | Ocean | Nijgh & Van Ditmar / English editions vary | 1930s | Prose | Exile, wanderlust, death, homelessness. | – | – | English |
