The Monocle Minute

With its population of 18 million people and an estimated 22.8 million bikes, the Netherlands was until recently a cyclists’ paradise. But now it faces a new menace. E-bikes have been adopted at breakneck speed, including chunky-tyred monsters that can easily be souped up to reach 45km/h. They are known, in the quirky way that the Dutch use the English language, as “fat bikes”.

On Amsterdam’s narrow lanes, these bikes are an everyday hazard – not least because their riders are often as young as 10 years old. While Dutch road deaths are relatively rare, the number of accidents seems to be rising and many involve e-bikes. Hospitals recently spent a week gathering their own detailed figures; based on these statistics, national safety organisation VeiligheidNL estimates that, between April and June, there were 115 accidents involving fat bikes that ended up with those involved requiring medical treatment. Half of the victims were between 12 and 15 years old.

There’s something particularly Dutch about the debate. Here, many consider helmets to be unnecessary and even argue that forcing riders to wear them is a form of “victim blaming”. The rise of fat bikes coincided with the passage of laws requiring moped users to don head protection. Though MPs have now voted for a minimum age of 14 for the use of fat bikes and made helmets obligatory, there is social resistance to the idea of making head protection compulsory for all electric bikers. Meanwhile, police are cracking down on rule breakers and safety inspectors recently confiscated 16,500 illegal bikes imported from China.

Other countries should be wary. The Dutch are early adopters. Electric bikes might make cycling easier and faster but they don’t come with an instruction manual on traffic rules. Once these monsters hit your roads too, there might be no stopping them.

Senay Boztas is a regular Monocle contributor and journalist based in the Netherlands. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Authorities in Seoul have announced the creation of an intergovernmental body that will monitor the enforcement of sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), which involves 11 countries including the US, Japan and South Korea, will replace the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, which was dismantled last April after Russia’s veto.

The news comes as Pyongyang stokes tensions both on the Korean peninsula and the world stage. Earlier this week, North Korea destroyed disused roads connecting the country to South Korea, after accusing Seoul of flying drones carrying propaganda leaflets over its capital. Meanwhile, as many as 3,000 North Korean troops are being deployed to support Russian forces in Ukraine. As ties between Pyongyang and Moscow grow stronger, international co-operation between their adversaries is crucial.

The Tribeca Film Festival, launched 22-years ago by Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro to revitalise the cultural life of downtown Manhattan after 9/11, is landing in Lisbon for the first time this week. On 18 and 19 October, Tribeca Festival Lisboa’s curated selection of international films will be screened in the Beato Innovation District, a riverside cultural hub opened in 2022 as part of the city’s plan to revive its industrial areas. “We think of expansion possibilities not so much in terms of markets but of places where people live, work and play,” Rosenthal tells The Monocle Minute.

Beyond the screenings, there will be talks by both local and international talent – including Rosenthal and De Niro, as well as Whoopi Goldberg, Portuguese actor Ricardo Araújo Pereira and director Patty Jenkins – on themes such as the importance of humour and the challenges of streaming. “Portugal has cemented itself as a player in the international film community,” says Rosenthal. “We want to be at the forefront of the cultural renaissance that it’s experiencing.”

Fashion brands are increasingly making their presence felt at art fairs across the globe. From Dunhill hosting conversations with Moma’s Glenn Dowry during Frieze London to Miu Miu bringing together artists from more than a decade of collaborations at the Palais d’Iéna for Art Basel Paris, it’s clear that these once separate worlds are moving ever closer. And at London’s Soho Revue Gallery, South Korean designer Rejina Pyo is hosting an exhibition that is smaller in scale but perhaps just as noteworthy.

As She Is opens next Wednesday and runs until 2 November. The show will feature paintings, sculptures and mixed-media pieces by female artists selected by Pyo. Among them will be works by Galician-born sculptor Angela de la Cruz, UK painter Chantal Joffe and South Korean artist Jane Yang-D’Haene. The exhibition will also feature Korean antiques collected by Pyo’s mother, and Pyo’s own paintings. As her eponymous label enters its 10th year, the exhibition serves as proof that there’s value in looking beyond fashion – and in keeping things in the family.

Bruna Dantas Lobato’s translation of Stênio Gardel’s novel The Words That Remain won a National Book Award in 2023, while her own fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker. Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, was published this week. It explores the changing relationship between a mother and her daughter when the latter moves from her hometown in Brazil to the US. Here, Dantas Lobato tells us about the book’s themes, her writing process and the art of translation.

What were you trying to achieve with ‘Blue Light Hours’?
I really wanted it to be an immigrant novel, a campus novel and a mother-daughter novel. But I also wanted it to be simple and focused on their relationship. I’m not a writer who can plan ahead. I kept reshaping it and moving things around until I found out what I was actually trying to do. It’s very dialogue-heavy. I love writing speech.

How did you get into translation?
When I moved to the US, I was reading wonderful books from Brazil that I couldn’t share with the people around me. So much of the writing coming out of Brazil was beautiful but it seemed as though no one knew.

Has your work as a translator influenced your own writing?
Being a translator is like having training wheels as a fiction writer. You constantly think about form, dramatic effects and how to construct a scene. I also had a lot of guidance from more experienced authors who knew what they were doing. I am a translator because I’m a writer – and I’m a writer because I’m a translator.

Our interview with Bruna Dantas Lobato features in Monocle’s October issue. For more agenda-setting stories from the world of culture and the arts, pick up a copy or subscribe so you never miss an issue.

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