Het behouden huis

by Willem Frederik Hermans

Een partizaan houdt zich in de Tweede Wereldoorlog schuil in een schijnbaar verlaten huis.

Genres: Fiction, Dutch Literature, Classics, Literature, School, Historical Fiction, War

79 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Willem Frederik Hermans is one of the greatest post-war Dutch authors. Before devoting his entire life to writing, Hermans had been teaching Physical Geography at the University of Groningen for many years. He had already started writing and publishing in magazines at a young age. His polemic and provocative style led to a court case as early as 1952. His caustic pieces were compiled in Mandarijnen op zwavelzuur (Mandarines in Sulphuric Acid, 1963), which was reprinted with additions a number of times. It is Hermans’s belief that in order to survive people have to create their own reality. It is inevitable that all these experiences of reality will collide. Language is essential to create order out of chaos and plays an important role in this process. In his essays on Wittgenstein, Hermans studied this problem in depth. In his novels and stories Hermans places his characters in a world of certainty for themselves but equivocal for the reader. It is in this field of tension that the intrigue in De tranen der acacia’s (Acacia’s Tears, 1949) and in De donkere kamer van Damocles (The Darkroom of Damocles, 1958) develops. Although stories such as Moedwil en misverstand (Malice and Misunderstanding) and Paranoia have a surrealistic tendency, Hermans’ novels The Darkroom Of Damocles, Nooit meer slapen (Beyond Sleep), Uit talloos veel miljoenen (From Countless Millions) are more realistic or satirical and everything in his rich oeuvre is subordinate to the author’s pessimistic philosophy.

Reviews

[Helga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horrors of war, death, destruction and human suffering are portrayed perfectly in this story which takes place in Germany in the last days of the Second World War.

Our unnamed narrator who is fighting or more like trying to survive along with Soviet partisans is on the run from the Germans.

As he enters a town, he finds a seemingly abandoned house and decides to rest and hide inside.
But for how long would he be able to stay in the house?
And what would he do if the real owners return?

[Jola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Horrors of war depicted with cold realism, brutal honesty and deceptive emotional detachment. An Untouched House was published in 1950 so memories of real hecatomb must have been vivid and it feels. The scope of this novella is wider and more universal though — truth be told, the events narrated by the unnamed soldier could have happened and still can happen anywhere, anytime, during any armed conflict. The vagueness of geographical location and the namelessness of the protagonist serve the purpose well.

I definitely subscribe to Willem Frederik Hermans’s point of view on the devastating effects of war but found the graphic violence in this book overwhelming. The author's writing style is impressive: his succinct sentences with basic vocabulary reflect the way war influences how people think, feel (or rather do not feel) and act, deprived of rudimentary values and human emotions. There is such a contrast between the narrator’s matter-of-fact tone and the grisly and sickening things happening in this novella. Even the title of the book is a good example of Willem Frederik Hermans’s draining irony.

I admire the literary quality of An Untouched House and the author's deftness but feel squashed by his profound pessimism and hope to forget some nightmarish scenes as soon as possible. Reading this novella was like wading in icy, depressing bleakness.


Nazi, Zdzisław Beksiński.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but bleak novella of the folly and cruelty and ugliness of war.

A partisan abandons his unit while fighting in WWII and comes upon a house, a nice house, and occupies it for a while, and what then transpires forms a good chunk of this bleak novella. One of my fave authors, Michel Faber, had this to say about this work:
• As disturbing as anything by Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut.

The novella was originally published in Dutch in 1951. It was not published in English until 2018, by Archipelago Books, a nonprofit press devoted to contemporary & classic world literature (I am going to read more works put out by this publishing house…I have yet to do a deep dive of their catalog but they have a really nice website so you can take a look at all of the different authors it has and is publishing: https://archipelagobooks.org/about/). It took 67 years for this book to be translated/published in the English language. Argggh. 🤨

Reviews:
• This reviewer says “ It takes an hour or two to read, but An Untouched House is the kind of book that stays with you for ever.” — https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/... (in this review… Hermans’s novella is a bleak depiction of the absurdity of war, which knows no winners—a message that was difficult to convey to the Dutch public and its politicians shortly after the war and provoked a wide array of objections in his home country. The other two giants of postwar Dutch literature—Cees Nooteboom and Harry Musch—on the other hand, did not tire of defending and praising Hermans’s writing. Indeed, (Cees) Nooteboom in his afterword to David Colmer’s 2017 English translation contends, “It is impossible to imagine twentieth-century Dutch literature without him.”)

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The renowned Dutch author Willem Frederik Hermans remains rather undertranslated, and consequently underappreciated in English, so this new translation from David Colmer, published by Archipelago Press in the US and Pushkin Press in the UK, is very welcome.

In an informative afterword Cees Nooteboom quotes Hermans' own description of his credo: "Creative nihilism, aggressive pity, total misanthropy” and his World War II based books, notably his most famous work in English The Darkroom of Damocles and this one, reflect that - there are no heroes in Hermans war, no sentimentality, no ideology, just chaos, brutality and the desperation to survive.

It is 1944, and our unnamed first person narrator, having left the Netherlands in November 1940, is fighting with the Russians somewhere on the front (perhaps near Breslau), part of an international band of partisans. As he explains in broken French to a Spaniard, himself a civil war refugee of 8 years service:

“Me spy,” I said. “Little...” With my hands I indicated the degree to which I had been a spy, thinking about the next sentence. “Captured by Germans. Prison. Sentenced. Three years. Hard labor. On way to different prison, escape. Captured again. Concentration camp. Strellwitz. You know Strellwitz? Six months. Escape again. Caught, close to Swiss border. Jump out of train in Saxony. Walk, keep walking east.”

Amidst the chaos of a battle he ponders that on the one hand his life is in imminent danger at all times, but on the other hand does the wider world war really exist in terms of his day-to-day reality:

The bullets from their machine guns drilled into the nearby ground. It could happen now too, I thought, and I’m just sitting here, not doing anything, thirsty. I could get hit now too, as if sitting was punishable by death. But death comes for everyone, even without any wars . What difference does war make? – Imagine somebody who doesn’t have a memory, who can’t think of anything beyond what he sees, hears and feels. . . War doesn’t exist for him. He sees the hill, the sky, he feels the dry membranes of his throat shrinking, he hears the boom of . . . he’d need a memory to know what’s causing it.

Consistent with that his division find themselves in an abandoned town and sent on a vague reconnaissance mission he finds himself in an abandoned but large house:

The inhabitants must have fled or been evacuated. Two dogs came towards me. I held out a hand, but they were chasing each other and took no notice. It made me feel like I was dead, as if I could see them, but they could not see me. I couldn’t shake the thought that they had run right through me instead of past me. All I heard was their panting and the click of claws on cobblestones. The abandoned houses were about to stir and gather round me, offering themselves to me like women in travel stories about Indochina. The war had never really taken place; as long as I wasn’t wounded, nothing had happened. There had never been any other people, not in my lifetime, nowhere in the whole world.
....
After going into the front garden and making my way across the lawn to the steps, I realized that this would be the first time in a very long while that I had entered a real house, a genuine home. I had slept in prisons, in barracks, on straw in classrooms, once under a truck, in haystacks , in goods wagons. For three years I hadn’t once spent the night anywhere except shelters where people only worked, waited, or were held prisoner : police or railway stations, barns; a week in a hospital.

An idyllic scene although his description contains one hint of the horrors to come:

There was a sloping, dark green lawn with a large plane tree in the middle that had been pollarded so many times it now looked like a gallows with room for an entire family.

He decides to stay in the house and leave the war behind, hiding his gun and uniform, rather fortunately as the German forces quickly retake the town in a counterattack and he is able to pass himself off as the house-owner to a (it must be said rather cliched) German officer:

He began to make a show of tapping a cigarette on a silver case. “Since joining the army,”he said, “I have shaved every day without fail at exactly half past six in the morning. With hot water. I have been in the army for forty years today. Shaving with hot water, war or no war! That is what I understand by culture!”Although taller than me, he kept bouncing up and down, making his boots creak. “Culture gives no quarter! Culture is a single whole! Extraordinary circumstances are only an excuse! Someone who gives in to extraordinary circumstances, nah! He is simply no longer a person of culture!” I said nothing. You make me sick to my stomach, I thought.

"In the last war the British barrage began one morning at quarter past six. At half past I began shaving. It was too dark in the trench, so I moved to higher ground. That cost me half my little finger. But at half past seven I was sitting down to eat breakfast!”

But as he gradually realises he is not alone in the house, as someone else claiming (more plausibly) to be the owner returns, as the German troops become suspicious and as the Russians counter-counter-attack, he has to resort to increasingly violent acts to maintain his peaceful existence, leading him to question what he has become:

This bowl of bone covered with its lid and its movable hide, this was where it all came from: the other people, the world, the war, the dreams, the words, the deeds that seemed to happen so automatically it was impossible to imagine ever having been capable of thinking things through; as automatically as if one’s deeds were the world’s thoughts. You would need a second head to understand what that first head was, but I only had one, here in my hands, holding it in a way people never hold anything else. Yet, if not for the claims of scholars , you wouldn’t know your head was any different from your hand or foot.

And as he leaves the house for good he realises that: it was like it had been putting on an act the whole time and was only now showing itself as it, in reality, had always been : a hollow, drafty cavern, rancid and rotting at its core.

A short and relatively simple but powerful story and a great introduction to Hermans work.

Thanks to Archipelago Press and Netgalley for the ARC.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 2 out of 5]

1944, and, somewhere on the Eastern front, an unnamed man sorta fighting for the Red Army oddly finds himself alone in a luxuriously large empty house. Quickly shedding his uniform for civvies, he decides to pass himself off as the owner. But as the battle lines shift, the Germans move back into the area – as well as the real owner of the house. What will our man do???

The intriguing premise hooked me into trying out Dutch novelist Willem Frederik Hermans’ 1951 novella An Untouched House but unfortunately Hermans didn’t do anything special with it.

You’re not told where this is taking place or the protagonist’s name, and a lot of what happens feels contrived – finding the house, being left alone without consequence from the army, even his awful actions towards the end feel strangely dream-like - so I never felt like I had a firm handle on the story. And while I understand why Hermans opted for a vague storytelling style – to highlight the chaotic and uncertain nature of the war experience, which I did think was clever - it still left me unengaged and therefore not invested in what was happening.

It’s not helped by the roughly sketched characters I couldn’t remotely connect with or the rather banal message Hermans appears to arrive at by the end: war is hell/what is it good for (absolutely nuthin)! I suppose the brutal and nihilistic ending is realistic of the war but I still found it unimpressive, unimaginative and trying a bit too hard to shock. Certain aspects of the story left me plain baffled: the locked room and its inhabitant – what the whaaat was going on there??

Hermans’ prose is capable, even artful at times, and you get a strong sense of doom pervading the atmosphere of the time. Some of the imagery is striking – the first time the man takes a bath in he doesn’t know how long, and then the extremely bloody finale. On the whole though I found An Untouched House to be underwhelming given the dramatic subject matter, indistinct and unmemorable – I’m not surprised Hermans is largely unknown outside his native Holland.

[João Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent novella by Hermans. A surrealistic war novella with some interesting sarcastic remarks.

[Paula Mota · Rating 2 out of 5]

“He [WFH] summed up his attitude to life or, if you like, his credo, with one potent sentence that couldn’t be clearer: “Creative nihilism, aggressive pity, total misanthropy.” – Cees Nooteboom

Desconfio que estou a tornar-me mais misantropa do que os grandes misantropos, entre os quais Willem Frederik Hermans, quando leio um clássico da literatura holandesa sobre o absurdo e o sadismo da guerra e nenhuma parte me choca nem surpreende. Ainda assim, receei pelo gato e tive pena dos peixinhos de aquário.

“All the combatants seemed to be taking it easy as if the war was a large sick body that had just been given a shot of morphine. The only thing happening: a high altitude dogfight, two against one. I watched it, a blade of dry grass between my teeth. Like skywriters the fighter pilots were drawing a pattern of white loops on the blue background, as if for our entertainment and no other reason. Don’t try to read what they’re writing, it’ll drive you crazy.”

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

These 88 short pages are so intensely packed with image and feeling that reading it can’t help but be both wrenching and cathartic.

This is the story of a man trying to survive to the end of the last, senselessly destructive days of the Second World War, when chaos has overcome any sense of order or meaning in the conflict, and armies are scattered into roving bands of looters who feel no loyalty or purpose beyond terror and retribution, and when the best side with which to align yourself, to keep on living, can switch in an instant.

The narrator is a master of survival: good at knowing when to fight, or to run, or to hide. He has a pure kind of ruthlessness when his life is at stake. And yet whenever he has the chance—whenever his survival isn’t threatened—he reaches for human, genuine connection with those who cross his path. He feels pity. He feels a sense of wanting to protect what is most fragile and beautiful in the world, even if it won’t help him survive. He records the events he witnesses with such meticulous detail that even the most destructive and cruel acts are given a kind of dignity. The attention he devotes to describing undeserved acts of barbarism done to innocent others—some of which he witnesses, some of which he perpetrates himself—lifts this story from nihilism into a realm of hope for something better to come.

A beautifully told story of an ugly and destructive time.

[Ends of the Word · Rating 4 out of 5]

How best to convey, in writing, the indescribable horrors of war? Some authors place us in the midst of the battlefield, on the front line, in the trenches. Others take us to blitzed and occupied cities, with tales of ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances. Others discern some light in the darkness of the carnage – acts of valour, of compassion, of kindness which provide a welcome contrast to the bloodshed.

The novels of Dutch author Willem Frederik Hermans show us “the absurdity, cruelty and pointlessness of war”, as Cees Nooteboom explains in the afterword to this edition of “An Untouched House”. For Hermans, war is just another facet of what he considered a “sadistic Universe”. There is therefore a metaphysical, cosmic underpinning to the author’s work, and it is unremittingly bleak.

This novella, first published in 1951, is now available to English readers in a translation by David Colmer. This might be a book about war, but its setting is surprisingly distant from any ‘traditional’ battle, at least at first. The unnamed narrator, a Dutch member of the resistance, finds himself in a deserted spa town and discovers an abandoned, palatial house, seemingly untouched by the fighting. He deserts his fellow combatants and installs himself in it.

There is something surreal about the house. With its magical feel and its mysterious locked room, it seems to come out of a fairytale, not unlike the ‘lost chateau’ in Le Grand Meaulnes. It is hardly surprising then the narrator starts to believe that he will be safe from harm as long as he remains within it. But even this house will become a theatre of war. When the house is requisitioned by the German troops occupying the town, the narrator wildly holds on to his fantasy by pretending he is the owner. Eventually the Nazis are ousted by the Russian troops, aided by the Resistance. And so it is that the real world dispels the protagonist’s dreams, and what initially seemed a setting peripheral to the conflict is also touched by the “sadism of the Universe”.

Indeed, a defining element of this novel is its unrelenting violence, which reaches gut-wrenching levels in the final pages. Tinged with black humour and purposely over the top, the novel’s climax reads like a scene out of a Tarantino movie. No side is spared any punches: not the German soldiers, disseminating fear whilst acting as self-proclaimed defenders of “culture”; not the Russians or the partisans, at whose hands the town collapses into chaos. No wonder this novel made its author unpopular in some quarters. It is a veritable kick in the guts, a powerful indictment of war.

[Elena Sala · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN UNTOUCHED HOUSE (1951) A lovely, quiet house, untouched by war. Our narrator finds this "untouched house", inexplicably saved from the ravages of war. He is a Dutch partisan, he feels famished, thirsty and utterly exhausted. The war (WW2) is almost over now, they are making a final push against the Nazis.

His sergeant had sent him out to hunt for booby traps. Unexpectedly, he found himself in an empty spa town, and oh surprise!, a gorgeous, abandoned house, waiting for him. The inhabitants seem to have left recently. There is even soup on the stove but the house is uninhabited.

So he makes himself very comfortable. The narrator seems to be a sensible, reasonable man: he deserves a nice bath, a shave, clean, civilian clothes, a restorative sleep. But then, it seems that the Germans have retaken the town while he was asleep. German soldiers arrive, knock on the door, they mistake him for the house’s owner, and ask him to take in troops, which he does. He will gladly share his sanctuary with the Nazis because apparently, he doesn't really hate the enemy. He wants to survive, that's all.

Unfortunately, the house’s owners also show up and his stay is now really threatened. We now discover that the narrator is no longer reasonable, but willing to kill to keep his precious sanctuary.

AN UNTOUCHED HOUSE is a bleak, savage, slim novel about the pointless cruelty of war. Cees Nooteboom aptly describes the ending as an "apotheosis of random cruelty that is unparalleled in literature". Hermans, the author, has been compared to Céline. His prose is cold and spare, very suitable to tells stories which take place in what he calls the "sadistic universe" we inhabit.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of Hermans’ works that I have read. This is at least partly due to there being very little of his work available in English which is the only language I am comfortable reading in. According to Wikipedia, this novella was the first of Hermans’ works to be translated into English when it was called The House of Refuge and was included in a collection called “The World of Modern Fiction” in 1966. Now a new translation from David Colmer is being released and my thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a review copy.

As Hermans is new to me, I took a bit of time to investigate the author. It seems he is known for his pessimistic view of humankind. In particular, relevant to this novella, he sees civilisation as a very thin veneer over a much darker and chaotic human nature. And he sees war as a place where that dark side is released i.e. a place where we see the reality of people that we normally keep suppressed. To an extent, this view reminded me of the film “Saving Private Ryan” where the battle scenes, especially the long opening scene, show men descending into inhuman violence and becoming more and more animal-like.

It is this descent that Hermans manages to chronicle in what is actually a very short novella. A soldier fighting with the partisans in 1944 in the Second World War comes across a house that appears to be untouched by war and abandoned. This is the first sign of an almost dream-like, nightmarish, quality to the book (the locked room in the house will be another later on, and there are others). Our narrator moves in and, when the German troops arrive he decides to assume the role of the owner which the troops accept. This is working well until the real owner (or, at least, someone with a more realistic claim to ownership) turns up. Gradually, the instinct for self-preservation starts to take over and the violence escalates. Then the Germans lose control of the town again and the partisans go on a rampage bringing the book to a violent, destructive and bloody end.

War is a nightmare. War is, if you take Hermans’ pessimistic outlook on people, mankind acting without the veneer of civilisation and showing its true colours. It is, ultimately, a depressing but thought-provoking story.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Out of the many books I've read involving soldiers and warfare, this one was pretty unique. This reads like a complete delusion, like a straight forward narrative, but if you delve deep, it makes you think the main character was having a fever dream about his experience from war and the atrocities he encounters.

He could be laying up in a hospital, alone.
He could be lying in a trench, shot and bloodied, hanging onto life.
As focused as he has to be, the shell shock involved is taking over his mind and this story traverses through it endlessly.

This 'Untouched House' is peace personified.
The war will end and it will be ok to leave. The war will never end and he'll lose his house and his mind.

I don't know what this man has going for him outside of war, but it couldn't be any worse than what he's dealing with now.

Quite an interesting novella from an author that recently came on my radar thanks to my looking into the catalogue of Archipelago Books.

[Marco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niets is wat het lijkt. Aan de wreedheid van oorlog kan niets en niemand ontsnappen.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Untouched House is really a short story masquerading as a novel. It is only 80 scant pages in length. But oh, there is a lot of power packed within those pages.

At the end of WW II, our nameless Dutch narrator is trudging along some nameless territory, searching for booby traps when he happens across an abandoned house. He muses, “I realized that this would be the first time in a very long while that I had d a real house, a genuine home. I had slept in prisons, in barracks, on straw in classrooms, once under a truck, in haystacks, in good wagons.” The house seems quaint and odd after his senseless existence, but he quickly removes his uniform, dons the clothes of the owners, and makes himself at home. And then a German colonel arrives, mistaking him for the home’s owner and politely asking to billet his soldiers there.

I’ll take the plot no further but I will say this: the book elevates the absurdism that follows to an apex of horror and destruction, contrasting the refuge of the home with the craziness of murderous men coping with the senselessness and soul-killing reality of war. Do not expect a redemptive war tale; this little book is stark and its vision is dark. It delivers a powerful punch to the plexus in its embracing of meaningless cruelty. Not a word is wasted. An afterword by Cees Nooteboom refers to the book as a “sadistic universe that offers no room for escape.” The power of this book makes me curious to learn more about Willem Frederik Hermans and his works.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a country so small, so clean, so friendly, The Netherlands has produced some incredibly potent literature.

First written in 1950, An Untouched House presents an uncompromising situation taking place in the waning years of World War II, which Willem Hermans had witnessed first hand. His nameless narrator, separated from his partisan group, comes upon a fully stocked villa, a piece of heaven for this starving, filthy, thirsty man who soon settles in and becomes its de facto inhabitant. After somewhat of a idyll, events accelerate rapidly. Hermans may have intended this very slim novel as a metaphor for war in its absurdist, random violence, but make no mistake, this is no easy read. Cees Nooteboom, in an afterward, cites Hermans's reference to acts of war as the sadistic universe.

As a further note, choosing a book by its cover is usually a bad idea and choosing a book based on its publisher may even be a worse one, but everything I've read put out under the Penguin/Random House archipelago imprint has been provocative, intriguing and worthwhile.

[Paula Bardell-Hedley · Rating 3 out of 5]

“…it was impossible to imagine ever having been capable of thinking things through; as automatically as if one’s deeds were the world’s thoughts.”

This short but powerful novella is a minacious reflection on the brutality of war by the Dutch author Willem Frederik Hermans (1921-1995), whose most famous works include The House of Refuge (1952), The Darkroom of Damocles (1958) and Beyond Sleep (1966). Along with Harry Mulisch and Gerard Reve, he was one of the three most important authors in the Netherlands during the post-war period, receiving the highly prestigious Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren in 1977.

First published in 1951, An Untouched House concerns a partisan with the Red Army during the second world war. In the chaos of a battle-sapped German countryside he discovers an empty house, apparently unscathed by the surrounding devastation and, exhausted, falls asleep in the drawing room. He wakes to the sound of German boots marching up the front path, hides his filthy uniform and poses as the owner.

The interloper, whose name we never learn, keeps up the pretence, but becomes gradually more embroiled with the occupying forces and locals. The narrative is suffused with a fearful apprehension, and when the Soviets finally arrive, the story’s denouement is a hideously depraved and vicious spree of violence.

Translated into English by David Colmer, winner of the International Dublin Literary Award, the book is only 120 pages long (including a lengthy afterword by Cees Nooteboom) but is shockingly impactful. While I cannot claim to have relished reading this war classic, I was filled with admiration for its unflinching depiction of what happens when war numbs the human heart and destroys empathy.

Many thanks to Pushkin Press for providing an advance review copy of this title.

[José Van Rosmalen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dit is een gruwelijk en gewelddadig verhaal over een Nederlandse soldaat die aan het einde van de oorlog zich in een huis ophoudt. Duitsers die daar komen menen met de rechtmatige eigenaar te maken te hebben, een illusie die de soldaat in stand probeert te houden. Hij pleegt een dubbele moord, op een man en een vrouw. De rechtmatige eigenaar komt langs en ziet dat de soldaat zijn kleding draagt. Er is ook een oude man die vissen houdt. Het verhaal eindigt in chaos. ‘Ik keek het huis in de doodzieke keel’.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

An odd, unhinged, funny, and disturbing novella; a solider hiding out a presumably abandoned house in a luxury spa during WW2. Think Vonnegut/Heller meets--jeeze--The Girl Next Door?

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella is a punch in the gut. It is so raw and visceral that, despite its plot, it rises to become something special. When we read about the histories of wars, about the machinations of the powerful, we too often forget what happens when human beings must do the dirty work of implementing lofty ideas. It is set in World War II. We know nothing about the place or people we will encounter in this short journey. But what happens on the ground, what happens to the individuals who survive and fight on, that's a story that's hard to tell.

I couldn't help but think of the atrocities we read about every day now in Ukraine. Hermans describes the random executions, rapes, and humiliations people who are in the middle of war endure. He doesn't explain why. Who could? But he shows us an episode of "how." It is one we would all do well to read, especially leaders who make decisions about war in sanitized rooms with maps and board games.

[WJEP · Rating 4 out of 5]

A miscreant Russian soldier goes AWOL behind German lines. Then the line moves, exposing him. A grand piano contains a bunch of piano wire.

This novelette is part of the 1953 collection Paranoia which sadly does not appear to be translated into English.

[Subashini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set during World War ll, this fever dream of a plotless novella has a Soviet Partisan soldier chancing upon an abandoned house. As the Nazis suddenly appear in his temporary sanctuary, he pretends to be the owner of the house—and the real owner shows up. The prose is beautiful in this Dutch classic, with startling moments of insight and imagery. The trauma of war, nihilism, and futility of the human condition makes it a challenging read. The mood is overwhelmingly bleak.

Translated from Dutch by David Colmer with a particularly insightful afterword by Cees Noteboom.

[Aida Lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una novela corta que nos lleva a la Segunda Guerra Mundial acompañado al protagonista que nos narra la historia en primera persona .

✏️Una historia donde a pesar de ver varios bandos,no vemos enemigos,vemos la cotidianidad del día a día de un soldado,el afán de sobrevivir y lo que el autor holandés mejor plasma :la crueldad sin sentido ,la mezquindad.

✏️Es un libro de los que te revuelven,parece una historia intrigante ,casi un diario de un soldado y termina por tener un final incómodo,”indecente”.

✏️Tenemos personajes contundentes...pero lo que más me gustó ...una gran protagonista:La CASA,me ha parecido que he vivido en ella y sufrido por cada cuerda de su piano rota.

🖤La edición es destacable en general ,pero el epílogo destaca sobre manera ,nos deja disfrutar de la lectura para contextualizar la obra y darnos unos datos más que interesantes de la biografía del autor al final.

Además nos hace reflexionar sobre la importancia de las traducciones.

Todo esto es un plus a añadir a la lectura.

[The Reading Bibliophile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ce court roman est une vraie claque sur l'absurdité, la cruauté et la futilité de la guerre. Ecrit en 1950, ce livre montre la vraie nature des hommes en temps de guerre, en l'occurrence ici, la 2nde Guerre mondiale. La civilisation humaine n'est qu'un leurre, une fine couche de vernis laquée sur la bestialité innée de l'homme que le moindre conflit fait craqueler jusqu'à la peler complètement le temps d'un battement de cils. Tout le monde est logé à la même enseigne de la bassesse la plus infecte : les Nazis et la Wehrmacht, pour les agresseurs et, pour les "libérateurs", les Soviétiques de l'Armée rouge et les partisans ayant combattu à leurs côtés parmi lesquels on retrouve un membre de la Résistance néerlandaise et un combattant républicain espagnol. Auteur néerlandais complètement inconnu à l'étranger, Hermans avait tout compris sur la nature profondément nihiliste des hommes, à l'instar d'un Stieg Dagerman, d'un Primo Levi ou d'un Céline (l'antisémitisme en moins).

[Matthieu Wegh · Rating 4 out of 5]

? Mijn 2e Hermans na Nooit meer slapen en geleend van vriend Arnoud toen ik langs zijn boekenkast liep. De achterkant met veel negatieve recensies maakte me nieuwsgierig naar dit oorlogsverhaal..
🤔Ik had dus al wel bijzondere verwachtingen van dit korte verhaal, misschien eigenlijk nog luguberder dan het was: het was wel een realistisch verhaal, maar cynisch inderdaad en er gebeurden oorlogsdingen zoals die in een oorlog gebeuren, op een mooie, niet bijzondere, manier omschreven door Hermans.
MW 4/4/24

[Marina · Rating 2 out of 5]

An abandoned house occupied by an imposter; and an adopted cat, fascinated by a locked room ... these enticed me into 'An Untouched House'.
And yet it all descended into such a depraved orgy of violence ….
Hermans is a renowned writer and I’m sure he's saying something valuable and meaningful about – I don’t know- war, innocence , the inhumanity of humans…but it’s all lost on me. My thoughts on finishing the book were these- What a horrible little book, but mercifully, short.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horror and violence - war at its rawest. It's a nihilist view, all sides are implicated (Russians, Germans and Partisans in some unnamed place in Eastern Europe during the Second World War). Only the need to survive motivates the unnamed protagonist. Tension and even (very dark) humour keeps you reading. I read it in under two hours and at the end my brain was frazzled - not sure if this is a recommendation.

[Eline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mijn zeer lage waardering voor dit boek is vooral te danken aan een irritant college van een prof letterkunde die het tot in den treure heeft zitten analyseren. De uitwerpselen van een vogel op een vensterbank die symbool zouden staan voor de munten die in Oude Tijden op de ogen van de overledene werden gelegd zodat hij de reis over de Styx kon betalen? Komaan.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flashes of intense and hallucinatory imagery. Brutal ironies that ensure the WWII plot doesn't go down easy. But also fumbling scenes that felt underdeveloped and some missed opportunities. The very rare novel I thought should've been longer.
3.5 stars

[Mo Janssen · Rating 4 out of 5]

De oorlog verwoest alles, dat lijkt me de boodschap van dit boek. Zelfs het behouden huis, onaangetast door de oorlog, wordt geveld door de eindige Tweede Wereldoorlog. Een laatste slachtoffer van zes jaar terreur. Prachtig.

[Lena · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Over een bank lag een damesmantel. Hij praatte zoals de voorwerpen in een detectiveroman. Hij zei: ik lig slordig in elkaar gerold hoewel ik duur ben. Iemand heeft mij hier neergegooid op het punt mij aan te trekken en de deur uit te gaan. Maar zij bemerkte dat zij iets vergeten had. Zij is nog in het huis. Pas op, je bent niet alleen. - Twee hertenkoppen zeiden niets."