Augustus emails Peter Van Houten

Augustus Waters, after reading An Imperial Affliction at Hazel Grace Lancaster's urging, took the extraordinary step of tracking down its reclusive author, Peter Van Houten, and initiating an email correspondence that would ultimately lead to Van Houten's invitation for Hazel and Augustus to visit him in Amsterdam. This act of literary detective work transformed Hazel's private obsession with the novel's unresolved ending into a shared quest, and it became the foundation for Augustus's decision to use his one Wish from The Genie Foundation to take them both to the Netherlands.

Discovery and Contact

Hazel had long been haunted by the unfinished ending of An Imperial Affliction, a book that ended mid-sentence when its narrator, Anna, presumably died or became too ill to continue writing. She had written a dozen letters to Van Houten care of his publisher, asking what happened to the characters after the novel's abrupt conclusion, but he never responded. When Augustus finished the book, he shared Hazel's frustration and her desire for answers. Unlike Hazel, however, Augustus took a more resourceful approach: he found Van Houten's assistant, Lidewij Vliegenthart, through online research, emailed her, and she forwarded his message to Van Houten. Van Houten responded via Lidewij's email account, writing a long, philosophically dense letter that addressed Augustus's questions about the meaning of art and the nature of oblivion, while also revealing that he had not written anything else and would not do so. Augustus shared this letter with Hazel, who was astonished and immediately asked for the email address so she could write to Van Houten herself.

The Invitation

Hazel spent two hours composing an email to Van Houten, asking him to tell her what happened to Anna's mother, the Dutch Tulip Man, Anna's friends Claire and Jake, and Sisyphus the Hamster after the novel's end. Van Houten did not reply for two days, but when he did, his response was both tantalizing and frustrating. He wrote that he could not answer her questions in writing, because to do so would constitute a sequel, and he did not trust her not to share it. However, he added, "Should you find yourself in Amsterdam, however, please do pay a visit at your leisure. I am usually home. I would even allow you a peek at my grocery lists." This invitation set in motion the chain of events that led Augustus to use his Wish to take Hazel to Amsterdam, culminating in their disastrous meeting with the drunken, cruel Van Houten and the revelation that he had written the novel about his own daughter, who had died of leukemia.

The Letter from the Dead

Months later, after Augustus's death, Hazel discovered that he had written a letter to Van Houten in his final days, pages torn from a Moleskine notebook. In that letter, Augustus asked Van Houten to write a eulogy for Hazel, and he reflected on the nature of heroism, legacy, and the marks humans leave on the world. He wrote that Hazel "walks lightly upon the earth" and that the real heroes are not those who do things but those who notice things. Van Houten, after initially refusing, was forced by Lidewij to read the letter, and he told her to send it to Hazel, saying he had nothing to add. The letter became Hazel's final, posthumous gift from Augustus, a testament to his love and his understanding of her.