Salomé was bullied for years and no one did a single thing to help her. One day she finally snapped. Now at just sixteen years old, she's being held in a secure unit for young offenders Salomé's counsellor, the man whose good opinion is key to her release, is best known for his racist gaffes on reality TV. Her father has recently been diagnosed with liver cancer and her elder sister Miriam's main preoccupation is to get out of their small, close-minded village as soon as possible. Both at home and in the unit, things are unbearably tense. Salomé finds it hard to keep her temper and harder still to think about the crime she is charged with committing. But as time passes, she finds new strength to delve into the reasons for her rage and arrive at her own understanding of punishment, penitence and the paradoxical demands made on her existence as a Black woman. Raw and unsentimental, Confrontations is a powerful depiction of racism and resilience from one of the Netherlands' most exciting new literary voices.

'The Number Bias combines vivid storytelling with authoritative analysis to deliver a warning about the way numbers can lead us astray - if we let them.' TIM HARFORD Even if you don't consider yourself a numbers person, you are a numbers person. The time has come to put numbers in their place. Not high up on a pedestal, or out on the curb, but right where they belong: beside words. It is not an overstatement to say that numbers dictate the way we live our lives. They tell us how we're doing at school, how much we weigh, who might win an election and whether the economy is booming. But numbers aren't as objective as they may seem; behind every number is a story. Yet politicians, businesses and the media often forget this - or use it for their own gain. Sanne Blauw travels the world to unpick our relationship with numbers and demystify our misguided allegiance, from Florence Nightingale using statistics to petition for better conditions during the Crimean War to the manipulation of numbers by the American tobacco industry and the ambiguous figures peddled during the EU referendum. Taking us from the everyday numbers that govern our health and wellbeing to the statistics used to wield enormous power and influence, The Number Bias counsels us to think more wisely. 'A beautifully accessible exploration of how numbers shape our lives, and the importance of accurately interpreting the statistics we are fed.' ANGELA SAINI, author of Superior

NOW WITH NEW PROLOGUE ABOUT DEMYSTIFYING CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS, DONALD TRUMP AND WHY STATISTICS MATTER MORE THAN EVER 'The Number Bias combines vivid storytelling with authoritative analysis to deliver a warning about the way numbers can lead us astray - if we let them.' TIM HARFORD Even if you don't consider yourself a numbers person, you are a numbers person. The time has come to put numbers in their place. Not high up on a pedestal, or out on the curb, but right where they belong: beside words. It is not an overstatement to say that numbers dictate the way we live our lives. They tell us how we're doing at school, how much we weigh, who might win an election and whether the economy is booming. But numbers aren't as objective as they may seem; behind every number is a story. Yet politicians, businesses and the media often forget this - or use it for their own gain. Sanne Blauw travels the world to unpick our relationship with numbers and demystify our misguided allegiance, from Florence Nightingale using statistics to petition for better conditions during the Crimean War to the manipulation of numbers by the American tobacco industry and the ambiguous figures peddled during the EU referendum. Taking us from the everyday numbers that govern our health and wellbeing to the statistics used to wield enormous power and influence, The Number Bias counsels us to think more wisely. 'A beautifully accessible exploration of how numbers shape our lives, and the importance of accurately interpreting the statistics we are fed.' ANGELA SAINI, author of Superior