Short Story Highlight: The Boy Who Cast No Shadow by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

PS Publishing are offering a free download of Dutch writer Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s story The Boy Who Cast No Shadow, translated by Laura Vroomen. The story is currently a nominee for the SF&F Translation Award and won the Paul Harland Award for best Dutch story of the Fantastic in 2010. It was first published in English in the PS anthology Postscripts: Unfit for Eden.

The Boy Who Cast No Shadow won the prestigious Paul Harland Award for best Dutch story of the Fantastic in 2010. Mr. Olde Heuvelt tells us he wrote it in a four-day rush in between two chapters of a novel which was giving him uncontrollable screaming fits at the time. “To me,” he adds, “it’s a story about being different and coming to terms with the fact that that ain’t such a bad thing. With this story I humbly paid homage to Joe Hill’s Pop Art, which I think is the best short story of the 21st Century.”

Born in 1983, Mr. Olde Heuvelt is the much praised Dutch author of four novels and many stories of the fantastic. His work contains elements of magic-realism, fantasy, and humour, and he is well-known in Holland for evoking strong emotional responses in readers either laughter, crying, or terrible outbursts of violence. BBC Radio called Thomas (they couldn’t pronounce his last name) “One of Europe’s foremost talents in fantastic literature.” His latest novel, Sarah Hearts, is currently being translated into English.