Maite Karssenberg wins €20,000 Libris history prize
Historian Maite Karssenberg has won the Libris Geschiedenis Prijs, a prize for the best history book of the year, for her biography Dubbelleven of the 19th-century freethinker Geertruida Kapteyn-Muysken.
Writer and historian Maite Karssenberg has won the Libris Geschiedenis Prijs 2026 for Dubbelleven, her biography of Geertruida Kapteyn-Muysken (1855-1920). Jury chair Frits Spits announced the winner on Sunday in the VPRO radio programme OVT. The prize comes with €20,000.
The jury called Dubbelleven "a relevant book about female ambition, in which the biographer has worked like a detective and evokes historical sensation at a high level". It said the book exposes the appallingly subordinate role of women in the 19th century.
Karssenberg, born in 1989, also writes about her own search for her subject between the biographical chapters. Spits said the jury found this "completely original". She worked on the book for eight years, drawing on three diaries and hundreds of letters Kapteyn-Muysken left behind.
Her earlier book, Snijpunt Isfahan, describes a journey with her father, who is obsessed with Islamic mosaics.
The other nominees were Isabel Casteels, Maarten Van Ginderachter, Dik van der Meulen and Dik Verkuil. Last year the prize went to Janna Coomans for Dievenland.
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Libris Geschiedenis Prijs
The Libris Geschiedenis Prijs is an annual Dutch literary prize for the best Dutch-language history book published in the preceding year, chosen by a jury. The prize is awarded by the Libris bookshop and literature organisation and comes with a cash award for the winning author. It is one of the main awards for history writing in the Netherlands and Flanders, so winning it draws attention to a book and its author.