There has been a lack of Dutch fiction delving into the lives of Amsterdam's street wanderers but Grunberg's Silent Extras has now triumphantly filled that gap. Hopeless losers, cynical dreamers and colourful low-lifes crowd the pages of the author's second novel, translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett.

The story is difficult to summarise because, rather like Douglas Coupland's Generation X, the narrative does not follow a predictable or conventional pattern. Instead, it moves from episode to episode in fits and starts, always searching for, but never finding, a resolution.

The novel is written from the point of view of Ewald, a struggling young wannabe actor who dreams of stardom, but who in reality is simply drifting from one failed audition to the next. He befriends another acting hopeful, Broccoli, and together with his girlfriend, Elvira, the three of them cook up an idea to stop the world ignoring their talent. This outlandish scheme that the trio name Operation Brando is a crazy project that involves them trying to look like Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris.

The results are both hilarious and tragic but always highly readable. A madcap melancholia suffuses the book; it is utterly unlike anything written by British or American novelists. Silent Extras is refreshingly contemporary and original.