Lost in Rotterdam

Max Winkelaar has spent his entire life trying to earn love he should have received freely. Born premature in Rotterdam - a city rebuilt from the rubble of the Second World War - he learns early that survival means performance, that belonging requires achievement, that love comes with conditions.

Through relationship after relationship, he chases the approval that always stays just out of reach. When burnout breaks him at twenty-two, he finally says it to his mother's face, in her own living room, every sentence he has been assembling since he was a child. She tells him to get out.

Some cities rebuild after destruction. Some people do too.

Lost in Rotterdam is the first book in The Max Trilogy, a literary exploration of conditional love, burnout, and the courage it takes to leave everything behind.