WILLEM FREDERIK HERMANS
Translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke
Widely hailed as the most important Dutch writer of the 20th century, Willem Frederick Hermans was reintroduced to the English speaking world this year with the publication of his stunning Beyond Sleep. Bookforum called it “as bright and black as anything contemporary,” and The Scotsman announced that “the world really needs Hermans.” Now, in this new translation of his epic The Darkroom of Damocles, Hermans takes on the very core of the morality of conflict.
During the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt is visited by a man named Dorbeck. Dorbeck gives Osewoudt a series of dangerous assignments helping British agents and eliminating traitors. But the assassinations get out of hand, and when Osewoudt discovers that his wife denounced him to the Germans, he kills her too.
At the end of the war Osewoudt himself is taken for a traitor and captured. He cannot prove that he received his assignments from Dorbeck. Worse, he cannot prove that Dorbeck ever existed. It is the very impossibility of ascertaining the “right” side and the “wrong” side—the moral issue of the Second World War in a nutshell—that makes Hermans’s novel as breathtaking now as when it was written.
WILLEM FREDERICK HERMANS (1921–1995) is considered one of the most important Western European authors to emerge from the postwar period. His novels, short stories, essays, and philosophical and scientific writings represent a major body of work still undiscovered in the United States. Beyond Sleep was published by The Overlook Press in May 2007.