• Home

Dubai was Hoeven's key to becoming an author

Dubai - Dutch author Hoeven says she penned her first children's book fascinated by Dubai's culture.

Children's author Liliane van der Hoeven is well travelled. She's lived in Taiwan, Hungary and The Netherlands, but it was her five-year stint in Dubai, which inspired her to write her first book: The Key to Dubai.
"Quite simply, I got fascinated by this culture. It was a fascination I didn't quite get from living in other places," she tells Khaleej Times during the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature on Saturday.
Hoeven first got acquainted with Dubai back in 2010 when she and her husband were watching the evening news in Taiwan.
"They had just finished the construction of the Burj Khalifa and it was all over the news channels. That's when my husband turned around and suggested we go live there."
Little did she know that fly-away suggestion would be the start of her journey living in the Middle East, and the start of her journey to becoming a successful children's author.
Landing in Dubai with three children aged five, seven and nine at the time, Hoeven said she wanted to teach them about the culture of Dubai - both old and new - in a way that would "make sense to them".
"We visited several book shops, but there was little on offer. I couldn't find anything suitable for them."
And that's when the idea to write the book herself was born.
"Primarily it was for my kids, but soon I realised I was just as passionate about learning about Dubai as they were."
With a love for writing and illustrating, Hoeven began the five-year long process, which eventually saw her book published in September 2015.
Her illustrated encyclopedia sets out to answer many of the questions people often ask about the Emirates such as: What was life like as a pearl diver? And, what really lies beneath a camels hump? Speaking to local Emiratis, Hoeven said, she became more and more fascinated about learning the who, what, when, where and why's of Dubai.
From the fact that Abu Dhabi makes up 87 per cent of the UAE's land mass despite Dubai being the most heavily populated - with 2.2million residents - she said the deeper she dove, the more she found out.
"The prospect of finding all this information out was exciting for me. I love reading and I love encouraging my children to read to learn about things, so it all pann ed out really well."
Though the structure of her narrative remained "very close" to her original idea in the fact that it was more of a "guide than a story", what did change a lot from her initial plan was the illustrations.
"The more I went on, the more detailed my illustrations became. Usually pictures in children's books are simple, but I wanted to capture every detail of Dubai's culture from the strong, powerful Arabian horse to the awe-inspiring Date Palm."
And she said each detailed drawing acts as 1,000 words, and appeals well to her younger audience. Hoeven now lives back home in The Netherlands but said Dubai will always remain "close to her heart".
And for those interested in writing books for children, she said "go for it".
"If you are really passionate about something, just do it. I was fascinated about teaching my children about Dubai and then it got me thinking, 'why not teach others?'. I never dreamt it would turn into a published book, but it has."