Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [196]
Books |
Literature
A.C. Baantjer De Kok and the Mask of Death. An ex-Amsterdam policeman, who racked up nearly forty years service, Baantjer is currently the most widely read author in the Netherlands. This rattling good yarn, the latest in the Inspector De Kok series, has all the typical ingredients – crisp plotting, some gruesomeness and a batch of nice characterizations on the way. More? Try De Kok and the Somber Nude.
Tracey Chevalier Girl with a Pearl Earring. Chevalier’s novel is a fanciful piece of fiction, building a story around the subject of one of Vermeer’s most enigmatic paintings. It’s an absorbing read, if a tad too detailed and slow-moving for some tastes, and it paints a convincing picture of seventeenth-century Delft, exploring its social structures and values.
Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl. Lucid and moving, the most revealing book you can read on the plight of Amsterdam’s Jews during the German occupation. An international bestseller since its original publication in 1947.
Nicolas Freeling Love in Amsterdam (o/p); Dwarf Kingdom (o/p); A Long Silence (o/p); A City Solitary (o/p). Freeling wrote detective novels, and his most famous creation was the rebel cop van der Valk. These are light, carefully crafted tales, with just the right amount of twists to make them classic cops ’n’ robbers reading – and with good Amsterdam (and Dutch) locations. London-born, Freeling (1927–2003) evoked Amsterdam (and Amsterdammers) as well as any writer ever has, subtly and unsentimentally using the city and its people as a vivid backdrop to the fast-moving action.
Willem Frederik Hermans The Dark Room of Damocles. Along with Jan Wolkers, Harry, Mulisch (see below) and Gerard Reve, Hermans is considered one of the four major literary figures of the Dutch post-war generation. This particular title, published in 1958, but only recently translated, is all about the German occupation and its concomitants – betrayal, paranoia and treason. Indeed, the reader is rarely certain what is truth and what is falsehood. If this whets your appetite for Hermans, try the same author’s Beyond Sleep, which has also been translated recently. Hermans died in 1995.
Etty Hillesum An Interrupted Life: the Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum, 1941–43. The Germans transported Hillesum, a young Jewish woman, from her home in Amsterdam to Auschwitz, where she died. As with Anne Frank’s more famous journal, penetratingly written – though on the whole a tad less readable.
Arthur Japin The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi. Inventive re-creation of a true story in which the eponymous Ashanti prince was dispatched to the court of King William of the Netherlands in 1837. Kwasi and his companion Kwame were ostensibly sent to Den Haag to further their education, but there was a strong colonial subtext. Superb descriptions of Ashanti-land in its pre-colonial pomp. Also Japin’s Lucia’s Eyes, an imaginative extrapolation of a casual anecdote found in Casanova’s memoirs and set for the most part in eighteenth-century Amsterdam.
Sylvie Matton Rembrandt’s Whore. Taking its cue from Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring(see above), this slim novel tries hard to conjure Rembrandt’s life and times, with some success. Matton certainly knows her Rembrandt – she worked for two years on a film of his life.
Sarah Emily Miano Van Rijn. Carefully composed re-creation of Rembrandt’s milieu, based on the (documented) visit of Cosimo de Medici to the artist’s house. As an attempt to venture into Rembrandt’s soul it does well – but not brilliantly.
Deborah Moggach Tulip Fever. At first Deborah Moggach’s novel seems no more than an attempt to build a story out of her favourite domestic Dutch interiors, genre scenes and still-life paintings. But ultimately the story is a basic one – of lust, greed, mistaken identity and tragedy. The Golden Age Amsterdam backdrop is well realized, but almost incidental.
Marcel Moring In Babylon. Popular Dutch author with an intense style spliced with thought-provoking, philosophical content. In Babylon