Jan Lauwers is making a stage adaptation of Stefan Hertmans’ compelling epic War and Turpentine. 

For some people, no life is long enough to recover from the shock of love, not even if they live to be nearly a hundred.

- Stefan Hertmans 

Just before he died in the 1980s, Stefan Hertmans’ grandfather gave his grandson a couple of old exercise books full of writing. His grandfather’s life turned out to have been marked by an impoverished childhood in pre-1900 Ghent, horrifying experiences as a soldier at the front in the First World War, and a great love who died young. In the rest of his life he transformed his sorrow into tranquil paintings. Stefan Hertmans’ years of fascination with his grandfather’s life ultimately led him to take up his pen and write this moving novel.

Jan Lauwers presents a personal vision of the book, seizing on Hertmans’ story to create an intense show about the advance of industrialisation, the violence of the Great War, love, happiness, sorrow and the secrets of a human life, set to a new composition by Rombout Willems.