The Sorrow of Belgium
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Book Overview
A classic novel in the tradition of The Tin Drum, The Sorrow of Belgium is a searing, scathingly funny portrait of a wartime Belgium and one boy's coming of age -- emotionally, sexually, and politically. In 1939, Louis Seynaeve, a ten-year-old Flemish student, is chiefly occupled with schoolboy adventures and lurid adolescent fantasies. Then the Nazis invade Belgium, and he grows up fast. Bewildered by his family -- a stuffy father who actually welcomes the occupation and a flirtatious mother who works for (and plays with) the Germans -- he is seemingly at the center of so much he can't understand. Gradually, as he confronts the horrors of the war and its aftermath, the eccentric and often petty behavior of his colorful relatives and neighbors, and his own inner turmoil, he achieves a degree of maturity -- at the cost of deep disillusion. Epic in scope, by turns hilarious and elegiac, The Sorrow of Belgium is the masterwork by one of the world's greatest contemporary authors. Book jacket.
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0394562631
ISBN13:9780394562636
Release Date:May 1990
Publisher:Pantheon Books
Length:608 Pages
Weight:2.11 lbs.
Customer Reviews
4 ratings
Two-Books-in-One
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 17 years ago
My rating of four stars reflects the fact that I give five stars to the first part and three to the last part. The first third of the book is a beautiful, heartbreaking story of one schoolboy's love for his male friend. However many schoolboy romances there are, we can always use more of them. On the other hand, the last two-thirds of the book gives us an overlong mishmash of interactions between largely uninteresting characters (with some notable exceptions, such as the boy who earns a little money by sharing his body with a man in the neighborhood). I do recommend the book overall, but understand that you may find it a real slog getting to the end.
Probably one of the finest novels of the past century
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
The sorrow of Belgium is a long, rich and stunning novel, poetic and at times heart-rending. The book is obviously the masters (this is how they call Hugo Claus in the newspapers and reviews here in Belgium and Holland) most impressive and most beautiful novel and has everything in it to become (if it isn't it already) a classic, also outside Belgium. Anyone who likes 20th century literature should read this book, it has everything in it from Proust, Joyce, and Faulkner to Garcia Marquez and ... Claus. Just read the book and make your own opinion.
The best way to learn to understand Belgians
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
Hugo Claus, most famous writer in the Low Countries, wrote this "piece de resistance". For his oeuvre he should be awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature.The work, although looking quite bulky, fascinates from the first till the last page. It decribes in a painfull manner the hypocritical way well-to-do families live in pre-war Belgium, how religious superficiality leads to short-sighted nationalism, conservatism and collaboration with members of the occupating "Herrenvolk".Reading it, it helps to understand the ambiguous nature of the kingdom of Belgium (language, politics, economy and culture).
Coming of age in war-time Flanders
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
I agree with Ozzie from Ghent, although I read The Sorrow of Belgium in English after having lived in Flanders. It gives a real feel for life in a West Flemish town (? Kortrijk) in the years leading up to and including World War II. Yes, if you know the Low Countries you will feel more than a little nostalgia. But when will someone translate Claus's "Geruchten" (Rumors)?
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