Birney is the winner of the 2017 Libris Literature prize. The novel that won him this award, De Tolk van Java (The Interpreter of Java), is based on Birney’s experiences with his father. The story offers a unique perspective on the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949), laying bare the ugliness of the Dutch colonial history. Birney’s father, half Scottish-Dutch and half Chinese-Indonesian, worked as an interpreter and sided with the Dutch during the war. After a career of brutally interrogating and killing freedom fighters, he started a family in the Netherlands and continued his habit of abuse. Birney’s account of this is closely described in the book… The wildly popular novel has been called Birney’s Magnum Opus. It has won several awards and took the nr 1 position in the Bestseller Top 60 for four weeks. A stage adaptation is currently in the works.

Birney was slightly overwhelmed with his success and told De Volkskrant that ‘he wasn’t used to being famous’ and that he ‘needed more experience with being famous’ to deal with the press and other attention properly.

In 2018, Birney published two more books. In De fenomenale meerval en andere verhalen (The phenomenal catfish and other stories), he binds together a varied and accessible collection of his most beautiful pieces. Throughout the collection, a mysterious catfish pops up, a symbol of the quest for love and the mystery of an unattainable woman. Another source of inspiration is the past of Indonesia. His own father has a detailed role in the short story collection. It encompasses 25 years of writing and thus includes some of his best stories that he has written over the years. The other book, Radio Monte Carlo, is about Michael, a lost traveller caught in the turbulence of his parents’ lives. Radio stations with exotic names help him escape to dream worlds, only to send him crashing back down to reality time and time again.