What's Mine

"What's Mine is a surprising and deep work with a persistent quiet momentum carrying the reader back-and-forth in times and spaces across the slivers of four interlocking lives. It is totally engaging." —Brian Eno, musician, artist, activist

354 Rooseveltlaan, Amsterdam. It’s Saturday afternoon and Luis Sol is hauling his brand-new smart fridge up the stairs. 

A self-described “visual” person, Luis has filled his white-carpeted apartment with clean beautiful things: a glass table, a white couch, marble countertops, workout equipment. He can afford to on his meager bagel shop salary thanks to inheriting his mother’s city apartment. This is his home—a refuge from a confusing and intimidating world. 

Professor William Rose is an Oxford intellectual. He’s visiting Amsterdam to learn where he came from with the aid of an old letter which may prove Edward Hond, the renowned Dutch philanthropist, is his biological father. Following the letter’s address, he finds himself looking up into the lit windows of a small, one-bedroom apartment… only to see Luis. His choice to knock on the door, and Luis’s choice to let him in, will unravel each of their pasts, dismantling their lives as fifty square meters of meticulously decorated space becomes a territorial battleground. 

What’s Mine is Bette Adriaanse’s humorous and heartbreaking tale of two men who refuse to share. Luis and William’s conflicting world views, not to mention living habits, will test the limits of their sanity as well as those around them. A nosy neighbor, a philosophical cleaning lady, a maritime space lawyer, and the old park gardener will all begin to seek the answer to one critical question: Can what’s mine be yours too?