April 2, 2025
A month ago, PreparationTech was thinking about how to bring a little zing to our upcoming student visit to the Amsterdam Public Library. We had an idea: give students the chance to speak with a successful author. Deborah Carter, our Managing Director, immediately thought of Arthur Japin, the Dutch author of one of my top five books, 'The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi'. So we emailed him and asked if he would come and speak to our students, many of whom have African backgrounds. We knew it was a long shot: Arthur gets paid big bucks to speak at events and I couldn't offer him anything. Lo and behold, he agreed to come and speak.
And he did not disappoint. He regaled students with his experience of writing the book, a historical novel about two Ashanti princes who were taken to the Netherlands in 1837 and used as pawns by the Dutch to extract trade concessions from a Ghanaian king. Arthur wrote the book pre-Internet (1980-1990), conducting research by traveling to libraries and places where Kwasi and his cousin Kwame lived in Africa, Europe and Indonesia and physically handling old documents, letters, pictures, drawings, and even pressed flowers.
Today, Arthur uses the Internet to conduct research. He doesn't use AI and says he doesn't know much about it. He said he'd be interested to see if AI can emulate his writing style if it was trained using his books. He said he feels for new and younger writers who are writing in the age of AI.
Students were very inspired by his storytelling and referenced his book over the course of the day: querying the Library's Nexi AI tool for more information about the book, locating the physical book during the library collection treasure hunt, and during the pitching competition when the winning team won by pitching a new digital service and explaining how it worked by using Arthur's book as an example.
And it just goes to show you: member of the winning team each received a gift certificate from a Dutch retailer. We also gave them the option to receive a PRINTED copy of Arthur's book if they promised to read it. All four students asked for the book!
If you haven't read the book, do so. Here's an excerpt.
The kindness of strangers is profound.