Amersfoort does not have the literary weight of Amsterdam or Utrecht, but the city and its region figure in Dutch history and art in ways that reward reading before or after a visit.
The New Art — The New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian edited by Harry Holtzman and Martin S. James. Not a novel but a collection of Mondrian's own essays, letters, and theoretical writings. Reading his ideas about abstraction, balance, and the reduction of form to essentials — then walking back to the Mondriaanhuis and imagining a boy growing up in that Calvinist household — makes the connection between place and art surprisingly vivid.
The Assault (De aanslag) by Harry Mulisch (1982). A short, devastating novel about a man haunted by a single night in 1945 when his family was killed in retaliation for a Dutch resistance killing. Set partly in the Utrecht province during and after the occupation. One of the most important Dutch novels of the twentieth century, and the best preparation for visiting Kamp Amersfoort, the former concentration camp just south of the city.
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Not about Amersfoort directly, but essential reading for understanding the Dutch experience under occupation. Kamp Amersfoort was one of the transit camps used during the deportations — reading this before visiting puts the camp's history in the sharpest possible focus.
The Low Sky: Understanding the Dutch by Han van der Horst. A lucid guide to Dutch culture, history, and national character. Not a travel book — more a decoding manual. Read it and you will understand the polder model, why Dutch cities stayed so compact, and why a civic prank involving a large boulder is still remembered 350 years later.