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Description
"This is the highest kind of achievement of which fiction is capable. . . . Ranks with the finest European fiction of recent years."—The Christian Science Monitor
Uli Bouwmeester is a retired variety artiste who spends his days whiling away his time. Out of the blue, an invitation arrives to play the leading part in a new drama at the Actor's Theater in Amsterdam, and he is flung with a vengeance from the monotony of life in the suburbs into the reality of the 1980s. All goes well until a television crew arrives to interview Uli, revealing a secret from his past that threatens not only the success of the theater's enterprise but also Uli's life.
"In his corner of Europe, Dutch novelist Harry Mulisch is creating some of the more haunting, provocative fiction to emerge from the continent in the past decade."—New York Newsday
About the Author
Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch along with W.F. Hermans and Gerard Reve, is considered one of the "Great Three" of Dutch postwar literature. He has written novels, plays, essays, poems, and philosophical reflections.Mulisch was born in Haarlem and lived in Amsterdam since 1958, following the death of his father in 1957. Mulisch's father was from Austria-Hungary and emigrated to the Netherlands after the First World War. During the German occupation in World War II he worked for a German bank, which also dealt with confiscated Jewish assets. His mother, Alice Schwarz, was Jewish. Mulisch and his mother escaped transportation to a concentration camp thanks to Mulisch's father's collaboration with the Nazis. Due to the curious nature of his parents' positions, Mulisch has claimed that he is the Second World War.A frequent theme in his work is the Second World War. His father had worked for the Germans during the war and went to prison for three years afterwards. As the war spanned most of Mulisch's formative phase, it had a defining influence on his life and work. In 1963, he wrote a non-fiction work about the Eichmann case: The case 40/61. Major works set against the backdrop of the Second World War are De Aanslag, Het stenen bruidsbed, and Siegfried.Additionally, Mulisch often incorporates ancient legends or myths in his writings, drawing on Greek mythology (e.g. in De Elementen), Jewish mysticism (in De ontdekking van de Hemel and De Procedure), well-known urban legends and politics (Mulisch is politically left-wing, notably defending Fidel Castro since the Cuban revolution). Mulisch is widely read and (according to his critics) often flaunts his philosophical and even scientific knowledge.Mulisch gained international recognition with the movie De Aanslag (The Assault), (1986) which was based on his eponymous book. It received an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best foreign movie and has been translated in more than twenty languages.His novel De ontdekking van de Hemel (1992) was filmed in 2001 as The Discovery of Heaven by Jeroen Krabbé, starring Stephen Fry.Amongst many awards he has received for individual works and his total body of work, the most important is the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren (Prize of Dutch Literature, an official lifetime achievement award) in 1995.
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