Freek Moerdijk is a graduated philosopher. Searching for fitting work he ends up at a cultural radio program and a literary publishing house. But at age twenty-eight he decides to become a teacher. As such he encounters disconcerting experiences, one after the other.

In Death of a Teacher, Cyrille Offermans paints a perceptive and disturbing picture of the tensions of academic life. The student in doubt, the philosopher searching for a job and the committed teacher all make it defiant and exhausting to be a scholar at the start of the twenty-first century. The author doesn’t agree with the smug classroom veterans who complain about the good for nothing youth on to whom a good book is wasted.

Freek Moerdijk sees the school as a closed organization. The young teacher is astounded by the lack of vision and pedagogical knowledge of the school staff ignoring the real problems. Students and teacher with stress to which some are unable to cope with.

The school staff asks Moerdijk to speak at the funeral of a colleague he hardly knew. This gives him three options: agree and deliver an impersonal and standard speech, gracefully decline with a good lie or seize the opportunity to tell the truth.

'His language is almost the same as in his essays: both smooth and probingjournalistic. But this novel is most certain a critical fortress against the sign of the times. And that is most certainly striking' - Fleur Speet in De Morgen

‘A Philosophy lesson disguised as a formation novel' – Filosofie Magazine

'Offermans joins the tradition of Theo Thijssen, F. Bordewijk, Simon Vestdijk, Joost Zwagerman and Jan Siebelink' - Het Parool