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Ruth Francisco
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Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) Kindle Edition

by Ruth Francisco (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 35 ratings
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In the year 2020, a young woman joins the Dutch Resistance to defeat fascism, testing her passions, loyalties, friendships, and faith.

When Katrien Brinkerhoff turns eleven, Islamic terrorists brutally murder six Dutch actors, which touches off a tinderbox of sectarian fighting across Europe. Within weeks, Islamists take over the government. The most liberal city in the world becomes the most conservative, and Katrien and her family scramble to survive, forced to make one impossible choice after another.

Women must wear burkas. Children go to madrassahs, Christians and Jews are not allowed to own businesses, cannot work in government, cannot go to college. Atheists are sent to work camps. When her father dies defending the public library, Katrien's mother marries a family friend who is Muslim. They convert, and change her name to Salima.

At sixteen Salima joins the Resistance as a courier, then as a Postbode, moving Christians and Jews out of Europe, then as a saboteur, working with the exile government in Copenhagen to free Europe.

Then Salima makes the biggest sacrifice of her life—an arranged marriage to Kazan Basturk, son of a powerful Islamist, a decision that will lead her to question every choice she has ever made, eventually taking her to Turkey, where Coalition Forces will soon invade.

With a stunning sense of physical detail and reality, Amsterdam 2020 deftly interweaves the lives of Salima, her past, her loves, her work in the Resistance, and shows us a future that seems all too possible.
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  1. Book 2 of 2
    Amsterdam Series
  2. Print length
    419 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  5. Publication date
    November 21, 2015
  6. File size
    1027 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
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  9. Enhanced typesetting
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B018CLWNFS
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 21, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1027 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 419 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 35 ratings

About the author

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Ruth Francisco

Ruth Francisco

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I tend to write novels that are a little controversial. I don't intend to, but a question grabs hold of my mind--Do we have a right to say no to medical technology? What would it be like to be Jackie Kennedy? What might happen if you found out you were adopted as an adult? What would it be like to live with grizzly bears? Where is Islamic extremism taking us?--and it won't let go. I have to explore it, I have to write about it.

Since my interests are varied, my books are varied, perhaps too much so. But whatever the theme, I always explore identity, trying to reconcile the physical and non-physical worlds. My characters respond sensually to the world as I do, they question and doubt. It would be easier to be a different kind of writer maybe. I hope you get something out of my little efforts.

I worked in the film industry for 15 years before selling my first novel “Confessions of a Deathmaiden” to Warner Books in 2003, followed by “Good Morning, Darkness,” which was selected by Publishers’ Weekly as one of the ten best mysteries of 2004, and “The Secret Memoirs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.” I now have eight novels, including the best-seller “Amsterdam 2012,” published as an ebook. Whenever I have a chance, I write a short story that gets published in "The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine." I currently live in Florida.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
35 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Frappe2
5.0 out of 5 stars A great sequel to 2012, but even more action, suspense, and cultural detail.
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2016
Verified Purchase
In 2008, this author wrote “Amsterdam 2012.” (highly recommended) It was a prescient look at what might happen with the Muslim presence in the Netherlands. It was somewhat sympathetic to reasons why Muslim influence proliferated in European countries because of the humanitarian outreach programs and moderate behavior of its’ adherents. Many natives, especially the poor, were attracted to them and joined their cause. This action, coupled with immigration gave Muslims a plurality in voting, turning the country into “The Islamic Republic of The Netherlands.” The same thing happens in countries around the world. The story was intriguing, with plenty of action, and no less interesting because at times it was hard to determine where the author’s sympathies lay. Not anymore! In “Amsterdam 2020, a story full of James Bond style action, violence, and subterfuge, she lays out in well researched detail what it might be like in the no longer moderate country, controlled not by the peaceful, kind Muslims that we know would be the majority, but hard line, brutal fascists that employ the worst aspects of Sharia law. Our heroine is a “convert,” but (spoiler alert) becomes a key player in the resistance, brave and cunning in her efforts to undermine the regime. The story is also a fun trip around a great city, a travelogue of places, food and culture. I’ve read and enjoyed many of Ms. Francisco’s stories. This may be the best.
4 people found this helpful
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John L. Murphy
4.0 out of 5 stars Spirited sequel to Amsterdam 2012
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2016
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This sequel to Amsterdam 2012 continues the resistance by a few against the Islamist takeover of Eurabia. That first novel focused on America, despite starting in Amsterdam, where murders sparked a worldwide revolt that led to much of Europe capitulating to Muslim regimes and submission to their demands by the remaining Jews and Christians and secular residents. Among these, as well as some liberal Muslims, the Dutch fight back against the Islamic Republic of Holland. Here, Katrien, who converts with her family--as many do---takes the name Salima, but goes underground as Lina.

Her dual existence is of course complicated. The first novel made links between Ann Aulis in Southern California and Anne Frank, and similarly, another young woman--younger than Ann--faces the predicament of an arranged marriage with a leading kingpin from a prominent Turkish-Dutch Muslim clan. Teenaged Lina must face the challenge of the Resistance to infiltrate this family as a new bride, while trying to figure out the true motives of her husband, fifty-two year old Kazan.

On her author's blog, Ruth Francisco tells of finishing the book, started in 2013, in the past year of the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan murders, and the San Bernardino CA shootings. While many reviewed her first novel on Amazon and dismissed it as far-fetched or needlessly provocative, readers intrigued by the dystopian scenarios of Muslim domination imagined in Robert Ferrigno's Assassin trilogy or Michel Houellebecq's similarly barbed Submission (both authors' works reviewed by me) may welcome this. I found the writer's voice for Ann earlier and Lina here engaging, even if in this 2020 installment, the choice to make a transition between her narration and a third-person indirect for another key character sometimes a bit bewildering, as chronology is no longer straightforward.

The supporting figures get fleshed out more, as in Kazan's school friend at a Swiss academy, and humor in the pranks played there, or the "plucked and marinated" chicken the oiled and depilitated virginal Salima feels herself on her wedding day, offer some needed levity to a tense thriller. The delight Ruth Francisco has in plotting out the geopolitical and practical ramifications of Islamist social power gives her details more depth here, and from inside the divided Dutch culture, we understand the difficulty the Muslim authorities have in getting even their fellow congregants to submit to sharia law and all the puritanical trivia enforced on the Westernized Muslims themselves.

I also liked the Resistance scenes. Many of these were pitched for action more than insight, but how the burkas are deployed by men and women alike against the Islamic police and military makes for clever encounters. I felt there was more of an attempt by Ruth Francisco to delve into the intricacies of how an Islamic imposition would play out in daily life, and how individuals react and endure. Again, the parallels to Nazi occupation are evident, and the Dutch setting draws out "secret annexes" and hidden rooms, traditions still clung to by some Netherlanders, effectively to enhance a setting.

Suffice to say that Ruth Francisco slows down here to let us understand Kazan better, and how Lina (under more than one name or identity) relates to her new spouse. While as before some leaps in the tale-telling and the jumbled order challenge the reader, headings break up the chapters and dates are there to guide the confused. It's not perfect, but it's intelligent. This expands in dramatic fashion, more smoothly in a narrative than 2012 (reviewed recently by me) if bumpy as a thriller. (Chance meetings and just-in-time interventions make this a bit melodramatic at times.) The inherent interest in how Islamists might expand their caliphate and how those within it and from the outside might oppose it sustains itself. I am not sure of more to come is on the way from the Amsterdam series, but this is enjoyable.
3 people found this helpful
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legal eagle 3
5.0 out of 5 stars How Timely Can You Get?
Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2015
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WOW! how timely can you get??!! I am 'over the moon' impressed with the insight shown in this work! I had read "Amsterdam 2012" and that was prescient and now this is really scary. I at first thought this would be a book about politics -- it is Not-- it is a book about handling adversity in situations that could actually happen .... it certainly game me pause. By the way -- --A REAL PAGE TURNER!!
2 people found this helpful
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James I. Baker
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended
Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2016
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This is the sequel to AMSTERDAM 2012, and I may have liked it even better than the first. In a sense of course they’re bookends, and they take on added resonance when read together, because there is a bit of a hall-of-mirrors quality when they’re read in that way, with all the elements taking on further power because of the way in which they reflect and relate to elements in the other book...Great read!
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Crockslayer
5.0 out of 5 stars Timely. You won't want to put this one down!
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2016
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Timely and impressive in its physical detail and reality, Ruth Francisco has written a story that immediately pulls you into a possible future. Masterfully interweaving the lives of main character Salima, her past, her loves, and her work in the Resistance, this engaging and thought provoking story is one adventure you won’t want to put down. I loved it!
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Top reviews from other countries

Ralph Blumenau
4.0 out of 5 stars A dystopian thriller about about Resistance to an Islamicized Netherlands
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 23, 2015
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WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ONE SPOILER, RELATING TO WHAT I CONSIDER A MYSTIFICATION NOT ESSENTIAL TO THE PLOT.

In 2010 Ruth Francisco published a novel called Amsterdam 2012, and it is about the Great Eurabian War in which Islam conquers much of Europe and is at war with the United States. (I have not yet read that book.) The current novel, published in 2015, is set mainly in the years 2020 to 2022, and its main setting is Amsterdam. The Netherlands had become an Islamic Republic in 2012.

There is a brief account of the period before that takeover, when the Islamic population in the Netherlands, though a minority, had become sufficiently numerous to seize the country by force, adding it to the United Nations of Islam which also control Belgium, England, France, Germany West of the Rhine, Austria, the Balkans, Turkey and the Arab countries. The Great Eurabian War is still going on, with a Coalition of the rest of Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Scotland, Ireland, Italy and the Americas preparing for a counter-attack.

The Islamicists govern with the kind of ruthlessness and vicious cruelty we have seen imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and, because the central character is a woman, it is the subjugation of women that is described in most detail, running a horrific gamut from the confinement inside a burqa, through pre-wedding depilation ceremonies and honour killings, to the lurid account of a woman who had been raped being punished for adultery by being first lashed and then stoned to death.

The book is not Islamophobic, though: it has several Muslim characters who detest the regime.

Until we are a quarter of the way through the book, we are led to believe that there are two central characters: one called Lina and one called Katrien. I had begun to wonder whether they might be the same person for some time before it becomes clear that in fact they are. The chapters about Lina are written in the first person, those about Katrien initially in the third person. I think this mystification is quite unnecessary to the plot. I feel the same about the device of telling the story in an unchronological order.

Katrien is a child of eleven at the earliest point of the novel, in 2010. By 2020, under the name of Lina, she is working for the Resistance against what they call the Occupation - there are several parallels here with the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, which in fact is embedded in the memory of the Dutch.

Katrien’s father was killed during a riot against the regime; her mother Jana then married an old friend who was a moderate Muslim, converted to Islam and gently put pressure on Katrien to do likewise, to change her name from Katrien to Salima, and to marry Kazan, the son of Ahmed Basturk, one of the more moderate members of the Islamic Council and whom she had not met. The leader of Salima’s Resistance cell encourages the idea, as it might enable Salima to learn secrets of the Islamic Council.

At this stage we learn of the Basturks’ past, and Kazan becomes another central character. The family had come from Turkey, and there are chapters of their lives back there. In 2005 his father had sent the then twelve-year old Kazan to a multi-national and multi-cultural school in Switzerland, then to the University of Zurich. At the school his best friend is a half-Italian half-Israeli Jewish youth with whose family he spends a holiday in Italy, where was introduced to Italian art. He had loved it all. These chapters, though well written, seem very long and initially far removed from the book’s theme. While Kazan is at school in Switzerland his father decides to relocate his family to Amsterdam. The reason he gives - that Turkey’s secular traditions are in peril - are at odds with what we already know of his role in the Islamic Republic of Holland. And we never do find out how he managed to become a member of the Islamic Council.

So Salima marries into this family. For a long time she will have to lead a double life in her marriage and this will be extremely difficult. We are about half way through the book, and I must not say how it develops without giving too much away. All the ingenious, courageous and derring-do things the widespread Resistance does are very well described and in great detail. At such times the book reads like a tense thriller.

But I think the author overdoes it a bit in the last quarter of the book. Not only is there a surfeit as dangers pile upon dangers in quick succession, but there are also just too many coincidences to be credible. The dénouement involves something that may look like science fiction today but might very well be reality by 2020 (and may even be possible today, for all we know.)

The author lives in Florida; but she obviously has a very detailed knowledge of all the locations in the book, especially of Amsterdam and all the waterways of Holland. She is very knowledgeable about sailing boats, trawlers and barges; also about the food eaten in different countries. She sprinkles her text with Dutch, German, Arabic, Turkish and Italian words.

Although there are some irritants about the way the book is written, the story is very inventive, very well told and, with the use of the historic present throughout, gripping.

One just hopes it is not prophetic!
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