Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund

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ISBN: 9781939810076

Content: " A brooding meditation on violence by a classic post-war Dutch writer who has drawn comparisons to Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. A mesmerizing, dark meditation on the legacy of war. An interloper and opportunist makes a grand house his own in the chaos of a war-torn countryside, only to find himself involved with occupying forces and enraged locals."

Content: Rezension(1): "Willem Frederik Hermans (1921-1995) was one of the most prolific and versatile Dutch authors of the twentieth century. He wrote essays, scientific studies, short stories, and poems, but was best known for several novels, the most famous of which are De tranen der acacias ( The Tears of the Acacias , 1949), De donkere kamer can Domecles ( The Darkroom of Damocles , 1958), and Nooit meer sleepen ( Beyond Sleep , 1966). About the translator: David Colmer is a writer and translator. He translates Dutch literature in a wide range of genres including literary fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and poetry. He is a four-time winner of the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize, and received the 2009 Biennial NSW Premier and PEN Translation Prize. His translation of Gerbrand Bakker's The Twin (Archipelago) was awarded the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and he received—,long with Gerbrand Bakker—,he Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for Bakker's novel The Detour ." Rezension(2): " The Guardian :A shocking Dutch classic... remarkable... It takes an hour or two to read, but An Untouched House is the kind of book that stays with you for ever." Rezension(3): " The Scotsman :Hermans is as alarming as a snake in the breadbin... hugely entertaining." Rezension(4): " Desperate Reader : Disturbing, haunting, and brilliant... an excellent antidote to misty eyed nostalgia for blitz or Dunkirk spirit." Rezension(5): " Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung :'A literary tour de force." Rezension(6): " The Book Jotter (blog):Short but powerful novella... I was filled with admiration for its unflinching depiction of what happens when war numbs the human heart and destroys empathy." Rezension(7): "Milan Kundera, Le Monde :I didn't know more [than a few facts about Hermans or his life]. But that wasn't necessary to delight in his novel. Works of art are gnawed at by a frenzied pack of comments and facts and their din renders the singular voice of a novel or a poem inaudible. I finished Hermans' book with a sense of gratitude for my ignorance,it granted me a silence in which I could hear this novel's voice in all its purity, in all the beauty of the unexplained and the unknown. I dove into this novel, intimidated at first by its length, then surprised at having read it without stopping. Because this novel is a thriller, a long chain of events in which the suspense never lets up. The events (which take place during the War and in the years immediately after) are described in a dry, exacting manner, detailed but swift,they are terribly real, yet skirt the limits of plausibility. I was captivated by this aesthetic: a novel smitten with the real and at the same time fascinated by the improbable..." Rezension(8): "〈a href=http://www.kirkusreviews.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/kirkus_logo.png alt=Kirkus border=0 /〉〈/a〉: Starred review from August 1, 2018 At the tail end of World War II, a partisan soldier finds a quiet sanctuary that delivers a brutal lesson about humanity at its worst.In his informative afterword to this slim but potent war story, Cees Nooteboom writes that Dutch author Hermans (1921-1995,Beyond Sleep, 2007) adopted the credo of creative nihilism, aggressive pity, total misanthropy. All of those dark moods are on full display here, but Hermans conjures them so subtly that the full force of his despair doesn't arrive until the closing pages. The narrator is a Dutch soldier in an unnamed patch of Europe making a final push against the Nazis. Assigned by his sergeant to hunt for booby traps, he stumbles across a quiet town and an abandoned house, where he quickly makes his weary self comfortable,it is the first time in a very long while that I had entered a real house, a genuine home. His solitary domestic AWOL existence doesn't last long, of course: German soldiers arrive, mistaking him for the house's owner, and ask him to take in troops. That opens the question of how complicit in evil we are willing to be for the sake of a soft bed. Quite a bit, Hermans suggests: After the home's owners emerge and his stay is threatened, the narrator is willing to kill to keep his perch: If the whole world disappears, I won't even notice as long as this house, this grass, and all the things I can see around me stay the same, he selfishly opines. Hermans doesn't deliver an explicit moral judgement on the narrator (indeed, he's sweetly reasonable throughout), but the thundering violence of the closing pages sends its own message. Fire, a suicide attempt, torture, and hanging are all shadowed by men killing with a cynical, mocking cruelty, stressing Hermans' point that dreams of peace can easily become entangled in violence.A dark wartime vision that evokes Koestler, Orwell, and Vonnegut. COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. " Rezension(9): "〈a href=http://www.publishersweekly.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/pw_logo.png alt=Publisher's Weekly border=0 /〉〈/a〉: August 27, 2018 The cruelty and absurdity of war shapes the events of Hermans’s devastating novella, first published in Dutch in 1951. Set in an unspecified locale toward the end of WWII, it is narrated by an unnamed spy, fighting with the Allies, who chances upon an abandoned house not yet ravaged by battle. Settling into it as though it were his own, he contends over several days with billeting Nazi soldiers, the surprise arrival of the house’s true owners, and an eccentric resident in one of its mysteriously locked rooms. “Imagine somebody who doesn’t have a memory, who can’t think of anything beyond what he sees, hears and feels,” he says. Extending these thoughts, he relates the horrors that inevitably engulf the house methodically and dispassionately. Hermans ( Beyond Sleep ) juxtaposes the randomness of the war’s atrocities with the bravado of one of the Nazis, whose boast that he has ritually shaved at the same time every morning for 40 years proves to be a grotesquely ironic effort to impose order upon a disordered world. This portrayal of a seemingly immaculate dwelling revealed to be “rancid and rotting at its core” is a powerful reflection on an inherently violent world."

Language: English

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