One of its main activities is organizing the annual Boekenweek (since 1932), a week-long, nationwide promotional event of Dutch books for adults and children.
[3] Since 2006, the CPNB holds an annual Nederland leest ("The Netherlands Read") campaign in November, during which the work of a single Dutch author is highlighted and promoted.
[5] While earlier selections were sometimes highly original (such as Hella Haasse's experimental novel Oeroeg in 1948), the organization is still accused of playing it safe, choosing established authors that appeal to broad sections of the population without possibly insulting anyone.
[6] In 1980, to counter criticism that previous offerings had been very weak, the CPNB managed to contract Gerard Reve, a controversial author and one of the "big four" Dutch writers[6] (besides Willem Frederik Hermans, Harry Mulisch, and Jan Wolkers), to write the Boekenweekgeschenk for 1981, and negotiated with Reve that his work, The Fourth Man, would not discuss homosexual relations between men.
Knap's De Ronde van '43 was panned by critics;[7][9] Vrij Nederland called the book "old-fashioned, sleep-inducing, and absolutely unrealistic."
[5] In 1988, Reve wrote Elco Brinkman, then Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, about the events (in a typically lengthy Revian complaint), and accompanied the letter with a copy of the book, so he could read it in the car on the way to and back from public engagements.