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Kandy: Een terugtocht
Kunnen wij ons iets gemeenschappelijk herinneren? En als dat zo is, wat is dat gemeenschappelijke dan? De gedachten van de hoofdpersoon in deze novelle, Fergus Steyn [F.S.!], gaan terug Kandy, een kamp op Ceylon. Daar verbleef hij een korte tijd na zijn repatriëring uit Nederlands-Indië. Zijn speelkameraadjes van toen is hij volledig uit het oog verloren. Zou hij ze een halve eeuw later weer op het spoor weten te komen, wat zouden ze elkaar dan nog te vertellen hebben?
- GenresLiterature
157 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
1 person is currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
F. Springer
29 books19 followersF. Springer (15 January 1932 – 7 November 2011) was the pseudonym of Carel Jan Schneider, a Dutch foreign service diplomat and writer.
Schneider was born in Batavia, Dutch East Indies. He spent World War II in a Japanese internment camp,[1] and afterward lived and worked in New Guinea, New York, Bangkok, Brussels, Dhaka, Luanda, East Berlin (he was the next-to-last Dutch ambassador there[1]), and Tehran all of which have served as locations for the novels and stories which he has published.
His laconic style is reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald or Graham Greene,[1] and he often adopts an ironic perspective on his often tragic subject matter, such as in Teheran, een zwanezang, a love story set against the background of the Iranian Revolution. Especially important in his work is the Netherlands Indies[2] and the concept of tempo doeloe, the nostalgia associated with life in the former Dutch colonies in the East.[1]
For Bougainville he received the Ferdinand Bordewijk award in 1982 and was awarded the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire work in 1995. He died in The Hague.
Schneider was born in Batavia, Dutch East Indies. He spent World War II in a Japanese internment camp,[1] and afterward lived and worked in New Guinea, New York, Bangkok, Brussels, Dhaka, Luanda, East Berlin (he was the next-to-last Dutch ambassador there[1]), and Tehran all of which have served as locations for the novels and stories which he has published.
His laconic style is reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald or Graham Greene,[1] and he often adopts an ironic perspective on his often tragic subject matter, such as in Teheran, een zwanezang, a love story set against the background of the Iranian Revolution. Especially important in his work is the Netherlands Indies[2] and the concept of tempo doeloe, the nostalgia associated with life in the former Dutch colonies in the East.[1]
For Bougainville he received the Ferdinand Bordewijk award in 1982 and was awarded the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire work in 1995. He died in The Hague.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 18, 2019
Sentiment en de wat-als. Springer vangt een mooie toon.
January 2, 2024
Favourite passages are the one with the 'theekoe' and when Pinkie touches his leg and the realization. I did not enjoy reading the book, maybe since I do not like the lost love ideas, but it isn't a bad book by any means.
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October 24, 2019Herlezen in 2019, ach mooi boek
November 21, 2022
Mooi boek over de terugtocht vanuit Indonesie die ging via Sri Lanka. Het gaf me inzicht in wat een ingewikkelde tijd het was zo direct na de oorlog. Mooie sfeerbeelden ook van de overtocht.
June 3, 2025
Extreem vet dat die kiddos een repatriëring hebben op een vliegkampschip, voor de rest een standaard Springer boek.
May 15, 2014
http://www.mytwostotinki.com/?p=153
Fergus Steyn is a bit bored after his retirement. After a professionally successful but obviously quite lonely private life, he is indulging in his childhood memories especially since he was invited as a conference speaker. The conference is on the experience of those Dutch who were repatriated from the former Dutch East Indies after WWII and Fergus Steyn is supposed to deliver a speech and a conference paper on that occasion.
After an early childhood in a caring middle-class family in Batavia (now Jakarta), young Fergus is spending a hard time after the invasion of the East Indies by Japanese troops. Dutch women and children are interned in a camp near Bandung, whereas the men – among them also Fergus’ father – are brought to a slave labor camp in Burma. But Fergus is lucky: his family is surviving the hardships of war and internment and is being repatriated in 1946. But the journey to the Netherlands proves to be much more difficult as the Steyns expected: the women and children are first brought to Ceylon before they are reunited with their husbands and fathers and they have to pass a quite long period on this tropical island before they can proceed with their journey home.
During the ship passage and the time in Kandy, Ceylon, young Fergus (called “Taffy”) gets acquainted with other children with a similar background. There is the ever-hungry Bollie and his big brother Hermann, Filip and his sister Flortje, the Indo boy Jop called "Djangkrik", and the charismatic girl Pinkie who forms a kind of gang with a secret language and code of this odd group of kids in puberty. The three months in the jungle camp of Kandy are like a paradise for the children: they get acquainted with strange animals and people, they watch films almost on a daily basis in the outdoor cinema, they make friends with gurkha soldiers, while their mothers drink tea and make small talk and try to speed up their reunion with the husbands who are stranded somewhere in Thailand and waiting for a transport to bring the families back to Holland.
Fergus develops an innocent friendship with Pinkie but on one occasion Pinkie is touching Fergus’ leg and this touch is the beginning of a new feeling. Only later, after Fergus has departed from Kandy (and Pinkie) and has returned home with his family, he begins to understand that he loved Pinkie. The invitation to the conference is bringing this lifelong feeling of having missed an opportunity, of not having lived a love that he never experienced again, back to the retired Fergus Steyn. Under the pretext to prepare the conference speech he is visiting two of his childhood friends from Kandy, a slightly disappointing experience. But at least he gets the address of Pinkie, now an old lady living in London with her husband. Finally Fergus is preparing to meet his first love so many years later…
Carel Jan Schneider (1932-2011), the author of Kandy was publishing his books under the pseudonym F. Springer. Maybe he thought that for a diplomat – he held various positions in the diplomatic service including that of the last Dutch Ambassador in East Berlin – it is not proper to publish novels and stories, maybe he just wanted to avoid gossip about his mostly autobiographical works. And Fergus Steyn seems to be really the alter ego of its author. "Kandy" is a melancholic book and like his acclaimed novel “Bougainville” has an unlived love as a central topic. The “Forever and ever!”, the oath of the youth gang that was once created by Pinkie, is being replaced by a “Too late!” at the end of the book. What happens in between is told by F. Springer with delicacy and in an elegant style.
F. Springer is an author that is still to be discovered in the English-speaking world, although most of his books are translated in German and “Bougainville” also in French. As far as I know, none of his works is up to now being translated into English. Publishers are kindly invited to change this: they will render readers a valuable service. F. Springer was for very good reasons compared with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Graham Greene.
Fergus Steyn is a bit bored after his retirement. After a professionally successful but obviously quite lonely private life, he is indulging in his childhood memories especially since he was invited as a conference speaker. The conference is on the experience of those Dutch who were repatriated from the former Dutch East Indies after WWII and Fergus Steyn is supposed to deliver a speech and a conference paper on that occasion.
After an early childhood in a caring middle-class family in Batavia (now Jakarta), young Fergus is spending a hard time after the invasion of the East Indies by Japanese troops. Dutch women and children are interned in a camp near Bandung, whereas the men – among them also Fergus’ father – are brought to a slave labor camp in Burma. But Fergus is lucky: his family is surviving the hardships of war and internment and is being repatriated in 1946. But the journey to the Netherlands proves to be much more difficult as the Steyns expected: the women and children are first brought to Ceylon before they are reunited with their husbands and fathers and they have to pass a quite long period on this tropical island before they can proceed with their journey home.
During the ship passage and the time in Kandy, Ceylon, young Fergus (called “Taffy”) gets acquainted with other children with a similar background. There is the ever-hungry Bollie and his big brother Hermann, Filip and his sister Flortje, the Indo boy Jop called "Djangkrik", and the charismatic girl Pinkie who forms a kind of gang with a secret language and code of this odd group of kids in puberty. The three months in the jungle camp of Kandy are like a paradise for the children: they get acquainted with strange animals and people, they watch films almost on a daily basis in the outdoor cinema, they make friends with gurkha soldiers, while their mothers drink tea and make small talk and try to speed up their reunion with the husbands who are stranded somewhere in Thailand and waiting for a transport to bring the families back to Holland.
Fergus develops an innocent friendship with Pinkie but on one occasion Pinkie is touching Fergus’ leg and this touch is the beginning of a new feeling. Only later, after Fergus has departed from Kandy (and Pinkie) and has returned home with his family, he begins to understand that he loved Pinkie. The invitation to the conference is bringing this lifelong feeling of having missed an opportunity, of not having lived a love that he never experienced again, back to the retired Fergus Steyn. Under the pretext to prepare the conference speech he is visiting two of his childhood friends from Kandy, a slightly disappointing experience. But at least he gets the address of Pinkie, now an old lady living in London with her husband. Finally Fergus is preparing to meet his first love so many years later…
Carel Jan Schneider (1932-2011), the author of Kandy was publishing his books under the pseudonym F. Springer. Maybe he thought that for a diplomat – he held various positions in the diplomatic service including that of the last Dutch Ambassador in East Berlin – it is not proper to publish novels and stories, maybe he just wanted to avoid gossip about his mostly autobiographical works. And Fergus Steyn seems to be really the alter ego of its author. "Kandy" is a melancholic book and like his acclaimed novel “Bougainville” has an unlived love as a central topic. The “Forever and ever!”, the oath of the youth gang that was once created by Pinkie, is being replaced by a “Too late!” at the end of the book. What happens in between is told by F. Springer with delicacy and in an elegant style.
F. Springer is an author that is still to be discovered in the English-speaking world, although most of his books are translated in German and “Bougainville” also in French. As far as I know, none of his works is up to now being translated into English. Publishers are kindly invited to change this: they will render readers a valuable service. F. Springer was for very good reasons compared with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Graham Greene.
September 20, 2015
Mooie roman over de omslachtige repatriëring van een veertienjarige jongen die met zijn moeder tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog in een jappenkamp heeft gezeten. Na 50 jaar kijkt hij, net gepensioneerd, terug op die periode. Gedeeltelijk autobiografisch.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews