Il libro di tutte le cose

Thomas has a strict and violent father who believes in an equally strict God. Thomas has a secret: he sees things that no one else can see. Thomas has a dream: ‘to be happy’. And as a neighbour of his – a bit of a witch – tells him, a good start is to stop being afraid.

An international success, one of the most important books in Dutch literature: a short coming-of-age novel with surreal and irreverent humour, a wonderful story about the power of imagination and the strength of togetherness.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“When I grow up, I’ll be happy”
“Goodness, that’s a brilliant idea. And do you know when you start being happy?”
“When you’re no longer afraid”
“Will you stop being afraid?”
“Yes, of witches for sure”

Seeing things others do not see, giving space to the uniqueness and extraordinary nature of a child’s vision. Through his eyes, reality is transformed, but what is reality, after all? We do not choose to tell the story of a child, but to become that child ourselves. Guus Kuijer’s novel The Book of Everything allows us to do just that, and this is the main reason for the fascination the text evokes. The author, in fact, paints Thomas’s world for us, allowing us to experience it from within: we are all Thomas. Every audience member will, in fact, be the protagonist, and what they see unfolding on stage will be the world filtered through the eyes of a child—the child Thomas, but also the child more or less hidden within each of us.