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Author: Willem Frederik Hermans Publisher: ABRAMS ISBN: 1468303996 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 278
Book Description
By the acclaimed Dutch author of Beyond Sleep: a thriller set in Nazi occupied Holland: “fast-moving, frighteningly real yet verging on the incredible” (Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being). During the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt is visited by a mysterious man named Dorbeck—a man who bears a strangely striking resemblance to Osewoudt himself. Dorbeck recruits him to perform simple, but top-secret missions on orders from London. But as the assignments keep coming, they get increasingly dangerous. Soon Osewoudt is being asked to commit murder in the name of Gestapo resistance. After the war, Osewoudt is taken for a traitor and captured. To prove his sacrifices for the Resistance, he must find the untraceable doppelgänger in an existential thriller “crackling with tension . . . bringing to mind Camus and the Sartre of Les Chemins de la Liberté” (The Telegraph). “Striking, suspenseful . . . Brilliant.” —The Observer
Author: Willem Frederik Hermans Publisher: ABRAMS ISBN: 1468303996 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 278
Book Description
By the acclaimed Dutch author of Beyond Sleep: a thriller set in Nazi occupied Holland: “fast-moving, frighteningly real yet verging on the incredible” (Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being). During the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt is visited by a mysterious man named Dorbeck—a man who bears a strangely striking resemblance to Osewoudt himself. Dorbeck recruits him to perform simple, but top-secret missions on orders from London. But as the assignments keep coming, they get increasingly dangerous. Soon Osewoudt is being asked to commit murder in the name of Gestapo resistance. After the war, Osewoudt is taken for a traitor and captured. To prove his sacrifices for the Resistance, he must find the untraceable doppelgänger in an existential thriller “crackling with tension . . . bringing to mind Camus and the Sartre of Les Chemins de la Liberté” (The Telegraph). “Striking, suspenseful . . . Brilliant.” —The Observer
Author: Willem Frederik Hermans Publisher: Harvill Press ISBN: Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 408
Book Description
"During the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt is visited by Dorbeck. Dorbeck is Osewoudt s spitting image in reverse. Henri is blond and beardless, with a high voice; Dorbeck is dark-haired, and his voice deep. I had the feeling I was an extension of him, or even part of him. When I first set eyes on him I thought- this is the sort of man I should have been. orbeck gives Osewoudt a series of dangerous assignments- helping British agents and eliminating traitors. But the assassinations get out of hand, and when Osewoudt discovers that his wife denounced him to the Germans, he kills her too. aving survived all the dangers, at the end of the war Osewoudt is himself taken for a traitor and captured. He cannot prove that he received his assignments from Dorbeck. Worse, he cannot prove that Dorbeck ever existed. When he develops a roll of film that should show a photograph of the two of them together, the picture is a dud. He flees from prison in panic and is dishonourably shot on the run. he story of Osewoudt s fateful wanderings through a sadistic universe is thrilling. Is Osewoudt hero or villain? Or is he a psychopath, driven by delusions? It is the impos
Author: Willem Frederik Hermans Publisher: Abrams ISBN: 1468303759 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 221
Book Description
“In this moving tragicomedy,” an academic hoping to secure his reputation gains “self-knowledge . . . achieved at great cost” in this literary novel. (Publishers Weekly) Alfred Issendorf is a Dutch geology student obsessed with the thought of dying without a major scientific discovery to his name. Setting off on a geological expedition which brings him to Norway, Issendorf is out to prove that craters in the landscape are actually holes caused by the impact of meteorites. But his trip quickly turns sour: the unearthly atmosphere of the midnight sun makes him paranoid; nights are too hot; clouds of mosquitoes steal his sleep; he is exhausted. Suspicion takes over and he sees secret plots against his scientific work by everyone and everything. Haunted by down-and-out scientists, the ghost of his dead father, and apparitions of ancient animals, Issendorf's character is both naïve and cynical, ambitious and distrustful, grandiose and talentless and his story is one of adventure and discovery, psychology and pride. Beyond Sleep is a classic of post-war European literature: the saga of a man at the limits of the civilized world. “An exceptionally well-crafted novel. . . . [the characters are] wryly funny, and in that lies the novel's brilliance. —Booklist “An unusual and intriguing book, and a welcome introduction to the work of a neglected 20th-century master. —Kirkus Reviews "A novel of worldly disengagement trembling on the edge of tragedy, all the more comic for being related in Hermans' best poker-faced manner" —J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize Laureate
Author: Willem Frederik Hermans Publisher: Pushkin Press ISBN: 1782274618 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 64
Book Description
A blisteringly powerful classic war story from one of the Netherlands' greatest writers WITH AN AFTERWORD BY CEES NOOTEBOOM 'The Dutch have hailed him as their greatest novelist, and now, slowly, Europe is getting to know him' Milan Kundera, Le Monde 'Bleak, hilarious, angry, ruthless... Hermans is as alarming as a snake in the breadbin... hugely entertaining' Scotsman Towards the end of the Second World War, a weary partisan fighting with the Red Army in Germany comes across a grand, abandoned house, seemingly untouched by the devastation sweeping the country. Exhausted, he falls asleep in the living room, but wakes to find a German patrol marching up the garden path. His only hope is to pose as the house's owner, but how will he keep up the pretence when the real owner returns? Dazzling, dark and scorchingly violent, with the breakneck pace of a thriller, this timeless classic is a vivid depiction of what happens when the mask of decency is cast aside in the savagery of war. 'A literary tour de force' Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 'A violent climax without equal in modern literature' Cees Nooteboom Willem Frederik Hermans (1921–1995) was one of the most prolific and versatile Dutch authors of the twentieth century. In 1977 he received the Dutch Literature Prize – the most prestigious literary prize in the Netherlands. He is considered one of the three most important authors in the Netherlands in the postwar period, along with Harry Mulisch and Gerard Reve.
Author: Gerard Reve Publisher: Pushkin Press ISBN: 1782271783 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF A POSTWAR MASTERPIECE 'I work in an office. I take cards out of a file. Once I have taken them out, I put them back in again. That is it.' Twenty-three-year-old Frits - office worker, daydreamer, teller of inappropriate jokes - finds life absurd and inexplicable. He lives with his parents, who drive him mad. He has terrible, disturbing dreams of death and destruction. Sometimes he talks to a toy rabbit. This is the story of ten evenings in Frits's life at the end of December, as he drinks, smokes, sees friends, aimlessly wanders the gloomy city street and tries to make sense of the minutes, hours and days that stretch before him. Darkly funny and mesmerising, The Evenings takes the tiny, quotidian triumphs and heartbreaks of our everyday lives and turns them into a work of brilliant wit and profound beauty.
Author: Jan Wolkers Publisher: Tin House Books ISBN: 1941040489 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 116
Book Description
The story of a tempestuous love affair—and the basis for Paul Verhoeven's Oscar-nominated film—Wolkers's controversial masterpiece comes alive in a new translation. Upon its original publication in 1969, Turkish Delight was a sensation and a scandal. Its graphic language and explicit sex scenes had an explosive effect, but just as revolutionary was its frank, colloquial style. The more straightlaced critics condemned the book, but readers saw a novel that reflected the way that they spoke, thought, and felt. Turkish Delight opens with a screed: a sculptor in his studio, raging against the love he lost and describing, in gory detail, the state of his life since she left him. Our narrator alternates between the story of his relationship with Olga—its passion and affection, but also its obsessiveness and abuse—and the dark days that followed, as he attempts to recapture what they had when they lived together, “happy as beasts.” The two only reunite during Olga’s inexorable and tragic decline into cancer—the chemo having taken her hair and rotted her teeth, she will only eat the soft, sweet Turkish Delight that her ex-lover brings to her bedside. In a new translation by Sam Garrett (Herman Koch’s The Dinner), readers get a sense of Wolkers’s revolutionary style and musical prose, Turkish Delight’s particular balance of naked impulse and profound longing. Tin House Books gratefully acknowledges the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, whose generous subsidy made this new translation possible.
Author: Hans Keilson Publisher: Macmillan + ORM ISBN: 1429980249 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 144
Book Description
A penetrating study of ordinary people resisting the Nazi occupation—and, true to its title, a dark comedy of wartime manners—Comedy in a Minor Key tells the story of Wim and Marie, a Dutch couple who first hide a Jew they know as Nico, then must dispose of his body when he dies of pneumonia. This novella, first published in 1947 and now translated into English for the first time, shows Hans Keilson at his best: deeply ironic, penetrating, sympathetic, and brilliantly modern, an heir to Joseph Roth and Franz Kafka. In 2008, when Keilson received Germany's prestigious Welt Literature Prize, the citation praised his work for exploring "the destructive impulse at work in the twentieth century, down to its deepest psychological and spiritual ramifications." Published to celebrate Keilson's hundredth birthday, Comedy ina Minor Key—and The Death of the Adversary, reissued in paperback—will introduce American readers to a forgotten classic author, a witness to World War II and a sophisticated storyteller whose books remain as fresh as when they first came to light.
Author: Max Frankel Publisher: Presidio Press ISBN: 0345466713 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
An examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis analyzes the roles, objectives, and actions of John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during the October 1962 showdown between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
Author: Gerbrand Bakker Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com ISBN: 1459608275 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother's role and spending the rest of his days 'with his head under a cow'. After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. 'A double bed and a duvet', advises Ada, who lives next door, with a sly look. Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while, on the farm?'The Twin' is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies. Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, 'the Twin' is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one's own hands. It chronicles a way of life which has resisted modernity, is culturally apart, and yet riven with a kind of romantic longing. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Author: Willem Frederik Hermans
Author: Willem Frederik Hermans
Author: Willem Frederik Hermans
Author: Willem Frederik Hermans
Author: Willem Frederik Hermans
Author: Gerard Reve
Author: Jan Wolkers
Author: Hans Keilson
Author: Max Frankel
Author: Val McDermid
Author: Gerbrand Bakker