Forever a Stranger and Other Stories

Voorkant
Oxford University Press, 1996 - 127 pagina's
Hella S. Haasse, one of Holland's most popular contemporary authors, was born in the Dutch East Indies in 1918. The influence of her early years in this region, where she left behind unforgettable memories, is clearly reflected in her writing.The stories in this collection, translated into English for the first time, contain oustanding descriptions of the Indonesian landscape and evoke remarkable images of a fascinating country and its people. 'Forever a Stranger', from which this collection takes its name, is of special significance toMrs Haasse. Ostensibly a story about a Dutch boy and his Indonesian friend whose childhood bond was increasingly undermined by race and class differences and ultimately destroyed by the Indonesian revolution, at a more fundamental level represents Mrs Haasse's attempt to come to terms with therealization that she had 'never been anything more than a foreigner' in the country she had so naturally loved as a child.The other two stories - 'Lidah Boeaja' (Crocodile's Tongue) and 'An Affair (Egbert's Story)' - were first published in Mrs Haasse's autobiographical volume entitles Een Handvol Achtergrond (A Handful of Ground). Both excellent stories with interesting characters and suspenseful plots, they showclearly Mrs Haasse's sensitivity to impressions absorbed into her memory and imagination during her childhood and youth in the Indies.

Vanuit het boek

Inhoudsopgave

Forever a Stranger
1
Lidah Boeaja Crocodiles Tongue
86
An Affair Egberts Story
106
Copyright

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Over de auteur (1996)

Hella Haasse was born in Batavia, the capital of what was then Dutch East India, now independent Indonesia. It is thus understandable why her first novel, Oeroeg (1948), describes the relationship between a Dutch and an Indonesian youth. As the two young men grow up, they gradually become conscious of their ethnic and cultural differences and, in spite of their efforts, nature appears to have destined them to become estranged from each other. Haasse's greatest impact on the Dutch literary scene occurred when her historical novel Het woud der verwachting (In a Dark Wood Wandering) (1948) was published. It was translated into English in 1989. This novel became a classic in its own time. In it the author describes the ever-increasing loneliness of the fifteenth-century Romantic poet--prince Charles d'Orleans, pretender to the crown of France, who wrote most of his poems in British and French prisons. In addition to giving a moving report of the life of a person destined to end his life in utter isolation, Hella Haasse succeeds in presenting her main character in a way which allows the reader to identify with him. Charles's life is interwoven with the lives of all the other people he meets. Haasse's talent for description and narration and her skill with flashbacks allow her to manage the novel's many characters, constructing a microcosm in which each reader feels "at home' and meets people with whom he or she can identify.

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