Books like De asielzoeker by Arnon Grunberg

Two lovers flee a war-torn city through mysterious doors, carrying hopes and memories into a world of uncertainty.

Twelve-year‑old Nao in Tokyo wrestles with loneliness and bullying and, before she ends it all, writes a diary about her great‑grandmother, a Buddhist nun who has lived a century. Across the Pacific a novelist on a remote island discovers objects from Nao’s life and is drawn into her mystery.

The novel's protagonist - named Arnon, like its author - is a young man on the run: expelled from high school and on the outs with his ailing father, he spends his days and nights living a vagabond's life on the streets of Amsterdam. He falls abjectly in love with a waitress in an Italian restaurant, and sneaks into fancy bars and hotels only to skip out when the check arrives. Then he begins to visit prostitutes, girls no older or wiser than he is - and his fumbling, guileless, surprisingly tender encounters with them we see the sadness beneath his nonstop comic riffing, and the profound restlessness that drives his search for adventure. The novel's Amsterdam is a place where sex is cheap but love is scarce. Arnon gets by on his cleverness and his sense of humor, and it is these that make Blue Mondays so fresh and entertaining.