Hertmans published five novels, two story collections, six essay books and twelve collections of poetry.
For Gestolde Wolken (Frozen Clouds, 1986), Hertmans won the prestigious Multatuli-prize of the city of Amsterdam. For his volume of poems Bezoekingen (Visitations, 1988), he was awarded the Arch-prize of the Free Word and the tri-annual Prize of the Flemish Provinces.
The title story of De grenzen van woestijnen (Borders of deserts, 1988), was published in English in The Review of contemporary Fiction (summer 1994); The well-known British author Rupert Thomson took the motto for his novel The book of Revelation from this story.
In 1994 his first theatre-text, Kopnaad (Suture, 1990), was produced by the Kaaitheater in Brussels, Flanders’ number one contemporary theatre, with Jan Ritsema as stage director. This production was nominated for the Theaterfestival 1995 and was staged in various cities in Flanders and Holland. Fischer Verlag Frankfurt published the German edition, which was turned into a Berlin radio play in 1997.
His novel To Merelbeke (1994), an ironical "autobiographical lie" about a Flemish youth, was widely praised and nominated twice (Libris-prize and ECI-price). A German translation was published in 1996 (Amselbach, Kiepenheuer Verlag Leipzig).
Muziek voor de overtocht (Music for the crossing, 1994), a volume of five long poems on Paul Hindemith, Paul Valéry, Paul Cézanne, Vaslav Nijinsky and Wallace Stevens, won the Belgian State prize for poetry 1995.
1998 he published a book called Steden — verhalen onderweg. This book really started Hertmans’ European career. In an autobiographical key, Hertmans relates his impressions in European cities as Dresden, Tübingen, Trieste, Bratislava, and Marseille. The book was widely acclaimed by critics in Holland and Flanders as one of the best of the year, and was nominated for the Generale Bank-prijs (former & later AKO). Reaktion Books, London, published a translation of this book in 2001. A French translation was published by Le Castor Astral in 2003 (Entre Ville), where it won the Prix La Ville ŕ Lire/France culture.
Goya als Hond, his latest volume of poetry, has been acclaimed as a real high point in his work and in contemporary Dutch and Flemish poetry . One of the poems won the prize for the best poem of 1999. The volume was awarded the ‘Maurice Gilliams Prize 2002’, a prize named after one of the most outstanding Flemish poets.
In 2001 he published the novel ‘ As on the first day’ ('Als op de eerste dag'), which was nominated for the AKO-Prize, and awarded the ‘Ferdinand Bordewijk’-Prize, one of the prizes of the Jan Campert-Foundation. This novel was published in French by Christian Bourgois ed., Paris, in 2003 and was widely acclaimed by the French literary press ('Comme au premier jour').
In 2000 Hertmans published a philosophical reflection on the obscene in contemporary imagination, called Het Bedenkelijke. Over het obscene in onze cultuur (2000). It appeared in a series with books by Peter Sloterdijk, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Zizek.
For the Brussels Kaaitheater he wrote a second theatre play, about the obsessive power of women in Greek tragedies (Antigone, Clytaemnestra, Medea). This text showed the radical expressionist influence of writers such as Friedrich Hölderlin and Heiner Müller. It was produced in the autumn of 2001 in a stage production by Toneelgroep Amsterdam with Gerard-Jan Rijnders. (Mind the Gap, Meulenhoff 2000).
He gathered his essays on theatre in Het zwijgen van de tragedie (The silence of tragedy, 2007), which won the Five Year Prize for Essay from the Royal Academy for Dutch Linguistics and Literature (KANTL). Spanish translation 'El Silencio de la Tragedia', Pre-Textos 2009.
- Borders of deserts, short story in The Review of contemporary Fiction, Summer 1994, Illinois USA.- The tail of the magpie, short story, and selection of poems in The literary review, 1997, Madison USA.
- Poems in Modern Poetry in translation, selection of twenty poems translated by Theo Hermans, Yann Lovelock e.o., London winter 1997- ‘Marsyas’, in Grand Street 70, spring 2002, New York- Poems in New European Poets, Ed. Wayne Miller & Kevin Prufer, Graywolf Minnesota 2008- Anne Marie Musschoot, The courage of the critical intellect, essay followed by extracts and poems, in The Low Countries, Arts and society in Flanders and the Netherlands, Yearbook 1997-1998, p. 178-186.
