Novel
The Sorrow of Belgium
Het verdriet van België
Hugo Claus · 1983
Synopsis
Flanders, 1939. Louis Seynaeve, son of a printer, is eleven and lives in a boarding school run by nuns, where he has founded with a few friends a secret society, the Apostles, which venerates forbidden books. During the holidays, at his parents' home in Walle or with his mother's family, he hears talk of the coming war and of politics: his father leans towards Rex, Léon Degrelle's movement. The second part follows him under the occupation, at the Jesuit college, within a family that consorts with the occupier.
Context
The novel appeared on 19 March 1983 from De Bezige Bij, in Amsterdam, with a large launch campaign, and received the Belgian State Prize for prose in 1984. Its two parts present themselves as the work of Louis himself: the first, in twenty-seven titled chapters; the second, in nearly two hundred fragments. The translation by Alain Van Crugten, published by Julliard in 1985, became a success in France after the author's appearance on Apostrophes. Claude Goretta made a mini-series from it in 1994, from a screenplay by the author.
Who it is for
A novel of more than seven hundred pages, in Dutch; translated into French by Alain Van Crugten and into English by Arnold J. Pomerans.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the most important Dutch novel of the twentieth century, and as the best known of its author's.