About us
De Bezige Bij - The Busy Bee - is one of the most distinguished literary publishing houses of The Netherlands.
The history goes back to World War II, when the house was part of the resistance, publishing and distributing poetry and novels. After the war the house continued as a writer’s cooperative and was named The Busy Bee, after the resistance nickname of its founder.
In the decades that followed one of the best and most prestigious literary lists was built. The very best of Dutch, Flemish and international literature: Mulisch, Claus, Hermans but also Beckett, Borges, Brodsky, Bukowski, Camus, Hesse, Joyce, Kerouac, Kosinski, Lowry, Nabokov, Pavese, Plath, Proust, Queneau, Salinger, Sartre, Woolf.
De Bezige Bij has three imprints:
- Cargo: focusing on literary thrillers and fiction, with a strong emphasis on Anglophone literature.
- Thomas Rap: a former independent publishing house with a wayward style of publishing. From cabaret books to a sports library and from talented debuting novelists and poets to publications by Dutch most famous columnists.
- Zoem: publishing audio books by authors from our rich backlist.
