The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories

The Penguin Books of Short Stories

by Joost Zwagerman (Editor)

For anyone interested in European literature these stories are an undiscovered snapshot of some of the most interesting and important writing of the twentieth and twenty-first century. From the same culture that consistently draws worldwide attention for its groundbreaking and avante-garde movements in the visual arts, this collection displays the same playfulness, innovation and sense of humour in Dutch literary movements. The stories are varied: subversive, profound, hilarious; stylistically experimental and psychologically astute.

The majority of these stories appear here in English for the first time, and many of these names will be unfamiliar to English-speaking audiences. Dutch writers have been gaining a swell of praise in recent years, and have been lauded by figures such as J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera and John Updike.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Anthologies, Dutch Literature, Literary Fiction, Novels

602 pages, Paperback

Published September 29, 2016

About the author

Joost Zwagerman was a popular Dutch writer.

Joost Zwagerman debuteerde in 1986 met de roman De houdgreep, die door Carel Peeters in Vrij Nederland werd bestempeld als 'het meestbelovende debuut sinds jaren'. Zijn doorbraak naar een breed publiek kwam met de roman Gimmick! (1989), die in 1996 voor het theater bewerkt werd door Theatergroep De Kwekerij. Het boek geeft een beeld van de trendy uitgaanscultuur en kunstenaarswereld van Amsterdam, waar hij in die tijd veel in verkeerde. In 1991 verscheen Vals licht, dat werd genomineerd voor de AKO Literatuurprijs en in 1993 werd verfilmd door Theo van Gogh. Ook De buitenvrouw (1994), over een liefde in multiculturele tijden, bereikte de longlist van de AKO Prijs. Nadien volgden de romans Chaos en rumoer en Zes sterren.
Zwagermans werk verscheen in vertaling in twaalf landen, waaronder Duitsland, Frankrijk, Japan en Hongarije. In 2000 werd de Duitse vertaling van De buitenvrouw (Die Nebenfrau) genomineerd voor de Nordrhein-Westfalen Literaturpreis. Ook ontving Zwagerman voor Die Nebenfrau de Literaire Prijs van de stad München.
Zwagerman behoort inmiddels, samen met auteurs als Connie Palmen en Arnon Grunberg, tot de meest gelezen Nederlandse schrijvers van zijn generatie. Dat bleek eens te meer toen hij in het najaar van 2003 veertig jaar werd: zijn uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers maakte bij die gelegenheid bekend dat van zijn boeken in totaal meer dan 1.100.000 exemplaren waren verkocht, exclusief vertalingen.
Behalve romans publiceerde Zwagerman ook gedichten en essays en was hij actief als columnist.

Zwagerman leed aan depressies. Op 8 september 2015 maakte zijn uitgeverij, De Arbeiderspers, bekend dat Zwagerman op 51-jarige leeftijd in zijn woonplaats Haarlem een eind aan zijn leven had gemaakt.

(Bron: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories collects thirty-six tales, one tale per writer, and includes familiar names to the English reading public - Marcellus Emants, Nescio, Maria Dermoût, Willem Frederik Hermans, Harry Mulisch, Cees Nooteboom, Arnon Grunberg. However, in the spirit of freshness, I will focus my review on six outstanding Dutch authors whose books of fiction have not yet been translated into English.

THE KID WITH THE KNIFE by Remco Campert
Storytelling magic. Remco Campert instantly pulls a reader into a drinking party of young hipsters when Dick tells Wessel there are some people who are not drinking. Like that fellow over there, Erik’s friend. Hey, Erik, what is your friend doing here if he’s not drinking? Erik says he’s a real crazy kid, a photographer. Really? Does his take war photographs? No, Erik says, he takes beautiful photos of Leidseplein youth. What’s that all about? Hold on, says Wessel, the kid is holding something shinny. Dammit, he’s got a knife – he’s a kid with a knife. Maybe the kid is crazy after all,

Dick and Wessel go up to the kid and introduce themselves. The kid says his name is Oscar. What would you like to drink, Oscar? Oscar tells them he doesn’t drink. Oh, all you need is a knife? That’s about it, says Oscar.

A little deeper into the conversation, Wessel asks Oscar if he knows how to throw his knife. Oscar shrugs he shoulders and says he does. Wessel presses him: is your aim any good? Oscar answers flatly: yes.

Wessel asks: well, what if we choose something for you to hit, can you hit it? The kid answers yes. Wessel has Bella, one of the cool girls, come over and says he has something exciting he’d like her to be part of. Bella says, “Far out.”

This Remco Campert tale composed of nearly all dialogue continues, the suspense building with every exchange. A most remarkable story.


Remco Campert, born 1929

WAR IS FUN by Bob den Uyl
“Listen there’s a war on. What more could a ten-year-old boy want? At last, an escape from the rut of going to school each and every day.” Bob den Uyl's tale of a schoolboy’s excitement at the prospect of bombs and death. And a third- person narrator providing a touch of irony around the edges. But the boy’s enthusiasm for breaking out of a boring routine is as genuine as it gets. And maybe if he’s lucky, his awful teacher will be one of the casualties.

Here are several quotable lines:

“Everyone could die any minute. The national anthem over and over, as though the Holland-Belgium march were kicking off three times a day.”

“So what if the Queen has fled to England, she wouldn’t know how to handle a gun anyway.”

“Rumors: when the marines on the bridges run out of bullets they attack the Krauts with knives, when they run out of knives, they use their teeth. Take that.”

“He’s dead, he has to be! A fancy funeral, the whole class behind their beloved teacher’s bier, it makes tears come to his eyes. There really still is something like justice in the world. He keeps his joy in check. A smiling face could get him into trouble.”



Bob den Uyl, 1930-1992

SUNRISE DAY by Margriet de Moor
"She knew for certain that she was beautiful. As beautiful as the reeds and the ice and the deep blackness gleaming beneath her. The whole combination was perfect. She was not at all startled by his grasp when he caught her after all and kissed her so hard that her lips split and started to bleed." In nine pages Margriet de Moor's short story expresses the range and depth of a mature woman's memories and emotions, from elation to grief.


Margriet de Moor, born 1941

THE MOTIONLESS MAN by Oek de Jong
Although I do not like other people and avoid meeting them, I entered his room one evening and asked, “And what about you? How do you occupy yourself?” So opens this riveting tale of a writer’s encounter with “the motionless man,” a man he calls Tze.

At one point Tze tells the writer: “Be so kind as to remain still. Even my own movement is unbearable to me. I hate motion, things changing makes me ill.”

The writer returns again and again to the motionless man’s small room: “Tze’s room was remarkably small. If I stretched my arms above my head, I’d touch the ceiling; if I took a step forwards and reached out my arms in front of me, then I’d hit the opposite wall; holding out my arms to the side to their full length was only barely possible.”

Although I’ve read hundreds of outstanding short stories, for me, most especially with the tale’s shocking final scene, a scene containing elements of the surreal and the fantastic, this Oek de Jong seven-pager ranks in the top dozen most memorable tales I’ve ever encountered. Why, oh why, is this the one and only Oek de Jong translated into English? I feel like kicking someone in the publishing industry.


Oek de Jong, born 1952

TINCTURE by Thomas Rosenboom
"My fear continued to grow. I sorely wanted to escape. Mattij's grasp by giving him something, something to create a bond, something bad, and in doing so I would become bad myself, on the same side as Mattji, as safe as a crow among crows." A disturbing tale of foreboding among schoolboys with hints of sadism and torture.


Thomas Rosenboom, born 1956

POOP by Manon Uphoff
A powerful story of contrasts: the chance meeting of a rich lady and a poor man, the beauty of an autumn morning along an Amsterdam canal and the prospect of being subjected to one of the most disgusting experiences imaginable. “Her mother-of-pearl nail directed his gaze towards the two gleaming, dark-brown piles of dog poop. “If you eat both of those, I will give you my house. The house of your dreams, with the garden and everything along with it.”” This short story caused a bit of a stir among the Dutch critics and literati when first published. Any reader can clearly see why!


Manon Uphoff, born 1962

Again, these are only six of the thirty-six tales collected here. There is also an informative Introduction written by Joost Zwagerman. Highly recommended! Thank you, Penguin.

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a wonderful collection as those things go. I enjoyed the majority of stories and discovered for myself a literary culture I was not familiar with.

It transported me into the atmosphere full of water and grey sky and endless horizons of the sea and sand. But also the Dutch possess very special sense of humour, dark and cerebral combined with the sensitivity for the place of the absurd in a daily life. I am not sure though whether it is the nation or the author who complied this collection and later took his own life. But the combination of the realistic and absurd, even occasionally the uncanny shines through these tales. There is also a strong satirical element. These authors know how not to spare the punches.

Initially I was lured by absolutely luminous writing in “The young titans” by Nescio. I enjoyed it so much that I’ve read the whole book of his short stories. Unfortunately he did not seem to write that much. But the stories I’ve read were timeless.

Another realistic story I’ve enjoyed was My Brown Friend by Simon Vestdijk. It was a story full of melancholy together with a confused sense akin to the first love combined with teenage angst. But also a story of prejudices in a small town, revenge and loyalty.

A story that I never thought I would like was on a surface an example of nature writing about muskrats (a type of water rats). But it is appeared I loved Maarten ’t Hart’s Castle Muider for its beauty and complexity of its elements. It was not that much about muskrats as about people and human nature in general. It was wonderfully composed, layered and strangely musical.

The grappling with being a nation of colonisers in the past is palpable in many stories. It reveals itself often subtly but very effectively at that. In his story Mulich uses a simple hyperbolic plot that creates a powerful metaphor for facing consequences of one’s actions.

But my heart was taken by Funeral Rights by Belcampo. The story has got this quality of a good fable - being out of time and place. It could happen in Ancient Rome or it could be still happening today in some not very remote corner of the world. In
a space of few pages it shows the power of cruelty and the power of love; and in spite of the obvious ending I wanted to believe there were no winners between those two. “A warriors of vanquished peoples” is caught and thrown in the pit.

Besides the fact that the business of war itself is pervaded with deep suffering, there had moreover been the certain realization of fighting against a superior force, in this case, of having to experience the fall of his tribe. To die without issue is already a double death, but to leave a world behind in which your language is being annihilated is the most bitter thing of all. And not because of an inner decline but because of a foreign power.

And then the winners are not satisfied by the victory and having a feast. They want an entertainment and use the beautiful captured females as a bait for the men in the pit. Between these girls the warrior sees someone who again made his life worth living to the end:

Oh, what is it, that powerful thing that suddenly can come into being between two people? A current? A force field? An invisible ladder, in this case? He saw that, among all those women, she was different. No less charming, but dazed and desperate like him. He was the only one who saw this in the midst of the hellish uproar.

The story seems very simple, a story told million times before. But somehow the way it was composed, the words he used has moved me greatly.

And then it was a story by Mensje van Keulen Sand. It was a totally different cattle of fish. After reading the first sentence, I would never be able to predict where all this would end. In fact I would think I could do that and I would be totally wrong. And the author managed to subvert my expectations more than once within this hyper-realistic, almost brutal tale. I think a single of my prediction would still be accurate: I would remember this story for very long. A Very impressive take on marriage and trust in general.

Some of those stories stretch the definition of black humour to the brim. A husband in one story feeds the body of his wife preliminarily frozen in a fridge to a bunch of seagulls. It was a bit too much for my liking.

However the other two stories reveal how such an unpleasant object of daily life like- sorry!!! - a poo could be used effectively in literature and not for gracious gory, but for depiction of very profound side of humanity and the society. There is an apparently controversial fable by Manon Uphoff titled accordingly. But I was more taken by atrocious, angry satirical tale by Frans Kellendonk Foreign Service told by unemployed man. It does not spare the Dutch society of its angry but witty commentary. I think I’d better quote this part of the story in full:

Have you ever met the couple who live upstairs, those two inflated torsos with small, superfluous heads, arms and legs? Those two are unemployed like me. They stopped talking about it years ago. They open their mouths only to shovel food into them. Before long they are likely to come crashing through the floor. Each day the thud of their footsteps grows duller; each day the boards over my head creak more menacingly. They are dutiful people. They take the money the state holds out to them and dutifully convert it into shit. Two digestive tracts, that’s what they are, two tubes connecting the authorities to the sewers. In times of heavy rain, the plumbing can’t handle their excrement – that’s how much effort they put into it. Then the turds float downstairs, through the entranceway, over the doorstep, and into the gutter. Two men from the city sanitation department come by with long bamboo poles, which they screw together. One of the men uses them to poke around in the sewer. ‘Is the sludge coming out yet?’ he asks the other one, who is staring down into the next hole over. He keeps poking and prodding until the sludge comes out and the money can start pouring in again.

And another spot on merciless diagnosis with its implications from the perspective of this angry man. I don’t agree with his suggested “recovery plan”. But the diagnosis might be accurate.

I cannot stand all the indifference around me, any more than he can, and so I too console myself with the illusion that I am hated. His sorrow is my sorrow’s twin, I am what I understand. Isn’t it possible that our solitudes could bring us together? Poor Gamal! If he thinks the Dutch hate him, he overestimates them. The Dutch cannot hate, any more than they can love – all they can do is threaten him with their sluggish indifference. You are the one who hates, Gamal! I too feel hate. The Dutch are so indifferent because democracy has turned them into slow-witted slaves. The politicians call it ‘the least of all evils’. They call that an ideology. They dare to call it a credo! In the Greek polis, the citizens knew each other. That was a place where you could make decisions together. But how do we go about that in this country? Here we are governed by the anonymous power of numbers. The majority rules, but the majority is no one, and no one can hold it accountable. Its delusional decisions are natural disasters against which there is no defence. I’ll take a despot any day of the week – then at least assassination would be an option.

A Room of My Own by Joost de Vries uses another example of unsparing political satire, this time applied to the world scene.

His protagonist meets Henry Kissinger next to the Louvre in Paris.

In that moment I thought about all the things you could know about him. In the thirties he’d fled Germany with his family to escape the Nazis, he’d become a brilliant academic at Harvard, joined Nixon’s government in the late sixties, successfully pursued detente with China and the Soviet Union, let the Vietnam War escalate (squandering tens of thousands of lives) so he could de-escalate it later on his own terms and win a Nobel Peace Prize for it. The peace negotiations had been held here in Paris. Anyone who might see him walking here in the Tuileries knew that. History personified – war and peace. This old man supported fascist regimes in Latin America, probably had Salvador Allende murdered, delayed informing the president so he wouldn’t mediate in the Yom Kippur War, deliberately left thousands to starve to death in Bangladesh. And here he was.

I do not want to finish on this note. So just come back to the beginning and say that the main impression that stayed with me from this collection was the the image of flat but velvet space, sound of waves and sand and the colour of luminous grey.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, the lovely Netherlands! Who among us can resist the flat charms of Der Haag, the flat charms of Amsterdam, or the knobbly charms of Limburg? This anthology, compiled from a larger anthology in Dutch by the editor Joost Zwagerman, contains 36 stories translated from the Dutch by authors who happen to be Dutch. Early classics include ‘The Opera Glasses’ a Gogolian tale of vertigo and social anxiety. The collection of early stories is fairly traditional in its focus on familiar Victorian themes and wartime narratives, never boring yet familiar. As we move into the modernist and sixties eras, there are irresistible stories about Dutch colonial adventures, such as the diary of despair in ‘Green’, funky youth-rebellion yarns with cheeky trumpeters as in ‘Women Win’, self-aware fiction-about-fiction as in ‘The Shattering Truth’, and a hilarious tale about an insane stalker-poet called ‘The Minnema Variations’. The Dutch short story is more electrifying for me post-1950s, and fortunately over half the stories are more modern. Included is Manon Uphoff’s controversial story ‘Poop’, in which a rich old lady encourages a hobo to scoff excrement, a strangely outrageous satire on the yawning chasms between classes. As with any collection, there are three or four snoozers for every ten winners, but this collection is mainly Dutch literary gold, mainlined into your eyeballs for a reasonable price. Lees dit, mijn vrienden!

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction, by Joost Zwagerman
Chronology

Marcellus Emants
--An Eccentric (Een zonderling)

Louis Couperus
--The Opera Glasses (De binocle)

Arthur van Schendel
--The Green Dream (De groene droom)

Nescio
--Young Titans (Titaantjes)

F. Bordewijk
--The Briefcase (De aktetas)

Maria Dermoût
--The Sirens (De sirenen)

Simon Vestdijk
--My Brown Friend (De bruine vriend)

Belcampo
--Funeral Rights (Uitvaart)

A. Alberts
--Green (Groen)

Anton Koolhaas
--Mr Tip is the Fattest Pig (Mijnheer Tip is de dikste meneer)

Hella Haasse
--The Portrait (Het portret)

W. F. Hermans
--Glass (Glas)

F. B. Hotz
--Women Win (Vrouwen winnen)

Harry Mulisch
--What Happened to Sergeant Massuro? (Wat gebeurde er met Sergeant Massuro?)

Jan Wolkers
--Feathered Friends (Gevederde vrienden)

Cees Nooteboom
--Paula

Remco Campert
--The Kid with the Knife (De jongen met het mes)

J. M. A. Biesheuvel
--The Shattering Truth (De verpletterende werkelijkheid)

Bob den Uyl
--War is Fun (Oorlog is leuk)

Maarten 't Hart
--Castle Muider (Het Muiderslot)

Helga Ruebsamen
--Olive (Olijfje)

Mensje van Keulen
--Sand (De spiegel)

Nicolaas Matsier
--The Minnema Variations (De Minnemavariaties)

Frans Kellendonk
--Foreign Service (Buitenlandse dienst)

Oek de Jong
--The Motionless Man (De onbeweeglijke)

Thomas Rosenboom
--Tincture (Tinctuur)

A. F. Th van der Heijden
--The Byzantine Cross (Het byzantijnse kruis)

Margriet de Moor
--Sunrise Day (De dag van Zonnegloren)

P. F. Thomése
--The Southern Continent (Zuidland)

Marcel Möring
--East Bergholt

Manon Uphoff
--Poop (Poep)

Joost Zwagerman
--Winnie and the Innocence of the World (Winnie en de onschuld)

Hafid Bouazza
--Ghost Town (Spookstad)

Arnon Grunberg
--Someone Else (Iemand anders)

Sanneke van Hassel
--Indian Time

Joost de Vries
--A Room of My Own (Een kamer voor mezelf)

Author Biographies
Acknowledgements

[Ana-Catrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so very good! And unexpected. I picked it up on a recent trip in Amsterdam and didn't know what to expect. Really quite excellent work.

[Kin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn't finish every story, but I really like the introduction by Joost Zwagerman. Almost all of stories and authors are new to me. Great to know them.

[Carly Philpott · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really enjoyed almost all of these stories and perusing the literary styles. also it’s so fun to read so many dutch perspectives. a few of the stories were rather tiresome. and the story “poop” was just gross (societally it was interesting but ugh)

[Emīls Ozoliņš · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought it in Nijmegen. It was nice to travel back, and read stories especially about the colonies.

[Eleni · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book when I was living in the Netherlands. I wasn’t expecting to love all the stories but I was hoping to get a varied and interesting flavor of the country. Unfortunately most of the stories are either extremely boring or just absurd. It’s not easy to write a short story: it should have a strong enough topic to be able to shine in a few pages. There is no time for character development and changes of direction. Maybe 3-4 stories out of the 36 managed that. Some read as chapters of a book that could be good but didn’t say anything on their own. Many left me with the feeling of wtf I just read. This book needed a looot of editing to get better, get rid of 2/3 of the stories and then it might have gotten readable. I only finished it because I’m stubborn about books, otherwise I would have given up a while ago. If you are ready to skip most stories get this book, otherwise read something else.

[F Gato · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very dark yet lack of beauty.
Finally give it up after realizing even if I force myself through the collection I won’t remember any of the stories. People are right. Many stories sound pretty much the same, at least in the degree of depression. Is Holland so lack of variety, or sunlight? Is it supposed to be minimalist? To shed all the visual/sensual adjectives and describe everything only in dull action - before this book, I couldn’t imagine anyone could write such a boring story of a music band’s tour. Where is all the glamour? Youth? Dream? Innocence?

I like Young Titans and love The Sirens (and maybe Green or actually maybe not)

It’s disappointed as I really like the penguin book of Italian short stories. Is it cultural? Or the editor’s fault?

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel bad because these stories are supposed to classic dutch short stories, but I only liked 2 or 3. Like the opera glass and the suitcase, but others made me fall asleep, so it felt like a choir finishing them.
It was nice to be introduced to some new authors but overall it wasn't that great.

[Jen Well-Steered · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every month or so, The Economist does a review of contemporary fiction from a particular country, and recently it was the Netherlands. I happen to live there, though my Dutch is limited, so it was great to find current literature in translation.

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent overview of Dutch literature (and perhaps Dutch spirit) through short stories.

[Richard Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unusually varied collection of modern stories- insights in life, Dutch or otherwise.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories is an anthology of thirty-six Dutch short stories spanning almost a century and edited by Joost Zwagerman. The majority of the stories appear in the English translation for the very first time, and I am reviewing five of them below.

The Opera Glasses by Louis Couperus (trans. Paul Vincent) – ★★★★1/2

This is a very well-written short story that keeps you on your toes throughout. It is about a young man in Dresden who decides to go and see Wagner’s opera The Valkyrie in theatre one night. He thinks he needs some opera glasses and hastily buys some heavy ones from one sinister-looking optician. What follows when he takes his theatre seat is one bewildering turn of events that even he cannot explain, and it concerns his sudden urges, obsessions and audience fixations. The object in his hands – those heavy opera glasses may be the cause. Louis Couperus (1863- 1923), one of the renowned Dutch authors, weaves into this effective tale of a “haunted” object the themes of fatalism, premonition, and obsessive thought.

Young Titans by Nescio (trans. Damion Searls) – ★★★★1/2

This is an evocative portrayal of the boundless potential and ambition of youth that meet disillusionment and ultimate resignation later in life. The tale is about a group of five lads in their late teens living in Amsterdam. Bavink, Hoyer, Bekker, Kees and “Koekebakker” (our narrator) think that anything is possible, and that they are “immortals” destined to lead great artistic lives. They read complex philosophical literature, paint, compose poems, fall in and out of love, and criticise their powerful employers. Although poor, they still think they have the last laugh in society or would have one in future: “we took our revenge [on others], we learned languages they had never even heard of and we read books they couldn’t even begin to understand, we experienced feelings they never knew existed“. As the friends continue to dream of becoming great poets, painters and philosophers, struggling with God and their purpose, life happens. This heart-felt tale by Nescio (the pen- name of Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh) is about nostalgia, the misleading confidence of youth, and the gradual burial of ambitions and hopes as the boys in the story are drained of their “noble intentions”, earlier creativity and intellectual potential by the societal pressure and money concerns.

Funeral Rights by Belcampo (trans. Richard Huijng) – ★★★★

“To be betrayed by life itself: this is the bitter end of every man”. Belcampo is a pseudonym of Dutch fantasy writer Herman Pieter Schönfeld Wichers, and this is an existentialist tale of a man, an ex-warrior, condemned to slowly die in a dark prison surrounded by meaninglessness and despair, and subsisting only on his memories of happier times. His captors then start to play with him and his fellow cell-mates a cruel, mocking game, taunting them with food and pleasure. The translation is a bit wonky here, but this is still an immersive, dark, progressively suspenseful tale that is also likely an allegory of human life full of competition, and the fleetness of human pleasure and happiness on Earth.

The Kid with the Knife by Remco Campert (trans. Donald Gardner) – ★★★1/2

This story’s opening paragraph alone can make you dizzy: “You only had to snap your fingers and it was party-time. Summer or winter, it made no difference, the evenings and nights reeked of alcohol. At 3 a.m. anything was possible: you could do a handstand on a genever bottle, fly to New York, get a job as a farmhand and lie in the corn, become stinking rich overnight and, years later, full of champagne, drown in a swimming pool on a moonless night.“

This story is about a rarity at a teenage party – a kid who does not drink. His name is Oscar and he is a photographer. He is now being cornered by other boys at the party, Dick and Wessel, and Oscar starts to show them a knife he has in his hands. Quickly, the other boys persuade Oscar to demonstrate to them his knife-throwing skills. The target? It is near Bella, a twenty-year-old girl. This perplexing, progressively disturbing story probably works and has its spell-binding effect because it is written in the same seemingly careless spirit (between a laugh and apathy) that many a teenager has had. It is almost a passage from a dark academia novel, chapter five or so, and comes from the author once as rebellious – Remco Campert (1929-2022), a writer, poet and columnist.

The Green Dream by Arthur van Schendel (trans. David McKay) – ★★★

This is a tale of Cloverleaf, an eccentric dreamer and fantasist. “Food and drink that everyone enjoyed, like currant bread and milk, revolted him….He did not care for this, he did not care for that, and what he did care for were things he had never really known, things beyond his grasp, like fairies and ambrosia“. This is a quick character-study read about a man in love with colour blue, but detesting colour green. It meshes reality and fantasy as it focuses on colour obsession that soon overwhelms the protagonist with a fevered mind.

[Missberet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normality is insane
One is haunted by a pair of opera glasses; Cloverleaf sees things differently, but revelry is just a dream; Everyone is a "young Titan" in our youth, but where does the rest of life take them?; Briefcases die too, you can take it with you; Tuangku- so- and -so loves swimming in the sea with the sirens and the cow fish, he probably doesn't know what happened; A bully gets a bath; Love is realized in the same language under torturous circumstances; Catch pigs at play before..; A mysterious portrait has the children questioning; Unfortunately the fuhrer is not dead; A band has one wild night in a school; A soldier gains weight overnight supernaturally; A refrigerator serves the seagulls well; An old gambler reminisces; Having a far-out time!; Writer's block eliminates a story; Feeling World War 2; Muskrat over population; Getting old is not pretty; Buggered at the beach; A writer haunts a dis- interested publisher; An eccentric Egyptian cleans houses; A Man's non- motion makes him a target; A young boy cooks up poison; A scissor collector has a reason for hoarding; Golden years come to an end; A son struggles to find himself only to live a father's dream; A priest worships a nun; What would you do to live in luxury?; An ex- boyfriend spies on she and her ex- boyfriend; A ghost gets the best of a pair; Did Aron really murder her?; A wife finds a moment of peace; A re-enacted battle at Waterloo brings on fond memories of France. Fin

[Caryn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book... I really did. Introduction to Dutch classical (and contemporary) authors, what could go wrong?? Oh but it can. It REALLY can.

I really found myself grasping around in the dark for stories that I could pass off to myself as "they were ok". Most were very heavy and tragic. Or abrupt. Or quite wacky to the point I couldn't get into it. (Like the story of a man whose girlfriend was the ex-communist nurse at a terminally ill center in the mountains. She was pregnant supposedly by a patient they believed was Hitler.... but he was burnt to a crisp, so Lord knows who he actually was. And that wasn't all that was wacky in the story.)

In the end, I blamed Joost Zwagerman for his choices and called it a day before the book was finished. I really had to. Sorry, but it's true. I'm sure there are more entertaining Dutch Short Stories out there. It's just this one wasn't it...

[Jake Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could write of the sincerity and significance of tales like "My Brown Friend", or the uprising of nostalgia and longing invoked by "Young Titans", but where I think this book really shines, is in the short titled Poop. Of all this books tales, Poop was by and far the one that got me talking. A story that is both elegantly crafted and outrages the reader is one I do so love to read. The outright absurdity trumps (in my opinion) everything and anything else.

Overall, this collection of shorts held my attention for many a week as I poured over and over each of the shorts and marvelled in the wonders of the Dutch of literary.

[Hanneke Van Keulen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this one to not just introduce me to Dutch literature but also as an incentive to improve my Dutch language skills (after living in the USA for 38 years I speak my mother tongue like a child), if an author catches my interest I might want to read more but in the original language. Oh my did this book do the trick! Never had I Loved an anthology of short stories more! It hit all my buttons, something creepy, something thought provoking, and even the light hearted to make you smile. And then there was Poop. I won't say more - you will have to read that one for yourself!

[Vincent Eaton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Received as a present. Time to get stuck into the unknown land of authors of nearby country. Always with such collections, high to low interest. I started backward. With the latest, ending with the earliest. Only read a story after finishing a novel - thus, this was read over a fairly long time-span, as gobbling short stories one after the other has always been avoided. Too much literary channel hopping, if you will. Educational, of interest.

[Philip Coulter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mixed collection (as such anthologies usually are). I particularly liked the touches of odd humour in Louis Couperus' The Opera Glasses, Nicolaas Matsier's The Minnema Variations, Marcel Möring’s East Bergholt and Arnon Grunberg's somebody else.
W.F Herman's Glass, which was a bit unhinged (although a bit of a disappointment compared to his novels that I've read), will also still in my mind for a while.

Will happily re-read these and others, and I'm sure have new favourites on re-reading.

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

#ReadYo'Shelves
#Own Category: Short Stories

This is the best compilation of short stories I have ever read. If I could I would rate it with six stars.
And it is such a wonderful edition. Penguin did a really good job here. Loved to hold it in my hands.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Any collection of short stories by different authors is bound to be quite variable, but with the exception of 3 (out of a total of 36) these were all unremittingly dull and miserable. I hope this is not a reflection on Dutch literature in general.

[Greg Burrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up on a visit to the Netherlands. Its a good selection in that it contains a wide selection of authors and types of stories. I can't say I enjoyed them all but I wasn't expecting to. It did make me wish I was back in Amsterdam or driving through the flower fields.

[Monika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled to read at least a good selection. I liked few of the stories and found many nonsensical, or, at best, hard to understand the message of. They mostly seemed too intellectual, instead of being gripping or touching.
Must be me. I decided to stop forcing myself and didn’t read them all.

[Bertha Lopez]

Amazin how much can you learn about a culture, when you read about his novels.

[Emer Bussmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful collection of short stories, so much variety and every one leaves you thinking. Really enjoyed this

[RD Chiriboga Moncayo · Rating 4 out of 5]

a good collection of stories by holland's finest writers.

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Kamille]

really loved Young Titans by Nescio. I need to pick-up his collection of short stories soon.