The Sorrow of Belgium

The Sorrow of Belgium PDF Author: Hugo Claus
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 632

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Book Description
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.

The Sorrow of Belgium

The Sorrow of Belgium PDF Author: Hugo Claus
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 632

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Book Description
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.

The Beauty and the Sorrow

The Beauty and the Sorrow PDF Author: Peter Englund
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307739287
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
An intimate narrative history of World War I told through the stories of twenty men and women from around the globe--a powerful, illuminating, heart-rending picture of what the war was really like. In this masterful book, renowned historian Peter Englund describes this epoch-defining event by weaving together accounts of the average man or woman who experienced it. Drawing on the diaries, journals, and letters of twenty individuals from Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Venezuela, and the United States, Englund’s collection of these varied perspectives describes not a course of events but "a world of feeling." Composed in short chapters that move between the home front and the front lines, The Beauty and Sorrow brings to life these twenty particular people and lets them speak for all who were shaped in some way by the War, but whose voices have remained unheard.

The Sorrows of Belgium

The Sorrows of Belgium PDF Author: Martin Conway
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199694346
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
The liberation of Belgium by Allied troops in September 1944 marked the end of a harsh German Occupation, but also the beginning of a turbulent and decisive period in the history of the country. There would be no easy transition to peace. Instead, the rival political forces of King Leopold III and his supporters, the former government in exile in London, and the Resistance movements which had emerged during the Occupation confronted each other in a bitter struggle for political ascendancy. The subsequent few years were dominated by an almost continual air of political and social crisis as Resistance demonstrations, strikes, and protests for and against the King appeared to threaten civil war and the institutional dissolution of the country. And yet by 1947 a certain stability had been achieved: the Resistance groups had been marginalised, the Communist Party was excluded from government, the King languished in unwilling exile in Switzerland, and, most tangibly, the pre-war political parties and the parliamentary political regime had been restored. In this substantial contribution to the history of the liberation era in Europe, Martin Conway provides the first account, based on substantial new archival material, of this process of political normalisation, which provided the basis for the integration of Belgium into the post-war West European political order. That success, however, came at a cost: the absence of any substantial political reform after the Second World War exacerbated the tensions between the different social classes, linguistic communities, and regions within Belgium, providing the basis for the gradual unravelling of the Belgian nation-state which occurred over the second half of the twentieth century.

The Sorrow of Belgium

The Sorrow of Belgium PDF Author: Hugo Claus
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780140097153
Category : Belgium
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description


Flemish Legends

Flemish Legends PDF Author: Charles De Coster
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 9361428144
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Charles De Coster's book "Flemish Legends" is an anthology of folktales and stories from the Belgian province of Flanders. De Coster vividly captures Flanders' rich cultural legacy and mythology in a sequence of engrossing tales. A wide range of characters, including bold heroes, crafty tricksters, and mythological creatures, are included in the book and are interwoven with enthralling and thought-provoking stories. "Flemish Legends" gives readers an insight into Flemish mythology and customs through the mythical exploits of till Eulenspiegel, a shrewd trickster, and the fantastical adventures of Reynard the Fox, a sly and cunning protagonist. De Coster leads readers to a world full of magic, intrigue, and moral lessons with her vivid storytelling and vibrant images. The bravery, humor, and resiliency that permeate the stories in "Flemish Legends" are a reflection of the Flemish people's values and beliefs. De Coster's writing captivates readers of all ages, whether she is narrating epic wars, comedic misadventures, or heartfelt love stories. This helps to preserve the ageless appeal and value of Flemish folklore for future generations.

Flanders

Flanders PDF Author: Patricia Anthony
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 048683865X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
"A harrowing and beautiful novel, demonstrating — again — that Patricia Anthony is one of our great writers." — Publishers Weekly In this gritty look at World War I's trench warfare, a young American sharpshooter ventures into no man's land each night to be ready by daybreak for the grim business of slaying record numbers of enemies. But Travis Lee Stanhope, a Texan serving with an English unit, is haunted by ghosts of the men he's killed as well as those of his fallen comrades. As he hovers on the brink of a transcendent experience, Travis gradually realizes that although he is surrounded by death, his true mission is related to life. A New York Times and American Library Association Notable Book, this tale was acclaimed by Booklist as "a haunting, sometimes almost hallucinatory, yet surprising war novel" and by Kirkus Reviews as "mesmerizing … highly textured and brimming with insight." "Flanders ranks close to All Quiet on the Western Front in its impact." — San Francisco Chronicle "Anthony's subtle and innovative storytelling reaches a new plane in her latest novel, a foray into magical realism that contrasts the waking hell of war with the fragile peace of eternity." — Library Journal

My Own Affairs

My Own Affairs PDF Author: Louise (Princess of Belgium)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Courts and courtiers
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description


I Who Have Never Known Men

I Who Have Never Known Men PDF Author: Jacqueline Harpman
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 9781888363432
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
A work of fantasy, I Who Have Never Known Men is the haunting and unforgettable account of a near future on a barren earth where women are kept in underground cages guarded by uniformed groups of men. It is narrated by the youngest of the women, the only one with no memory of what the world was like before the cages, who must teach herself, without books or sexual contact, the essential human emotions of longing, loving, learning, companionship, and dying. Part thriller, part mystery, I Who Have Never Known Men shows us the power of one person without memories to reinvent herself piece by piece, emotion by emotion, in the process teaching us much about what it means to be human.

Austerlitz

Austerlitz PDF Author: W.G. Sebald
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0679645411
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
W. G. Sebald’s celebrated masterpiece, “one of the supreme works of art of our time” (The Guardian), follows a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. “Haunting . . . a powerful and resonant work of the historical imagination . . . Reminiscent at once of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, Kafka’s troubled fables of guilt and apprehension, and, of course, Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times One of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and New York Magazine Best Book of the Year Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Koret Jewish Book Award, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion. Over the course of a thirty-year conversation unfolding in train stations and travelers’ stops across England and Europe, W. G. Sebald’s unnamed narrator and Jacques Austerlitz discuss Austerlitz’s ongoing efforts to understand who he is—a struggle to impose coherence on memory that embodies the universal human search for identity.

The Melting

The Melting PDF Author: Lize Spit
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1509838716
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
'Challenging and disturbing, The Melting is an incredibly cruel fable about friendship and adolescence . . . Spit knows no fear. It is we, the readers, that are left trembling.' - Leïla Slimani, author of Lullaby Eva can trace the route to Pim’s farm with her eyes closed, even though she has not been to Bovenmeer for many years. There she grew up among the rape fields and dairy farms. There lies also the root of all their grief. Eva was one of three children born in her small Flemish town in 1988. Growing up alongside the boys Laurens and Pim, Eva sought refuge from her loveless family life in the company of her two friends. But with adolescence came a growing awareness of their burgeoning sexuality. Driven by their newly found desires, the children begin a game that will have serious and violent consequences for them all. Thirteen years after the summer she’s tried for so long to forget, Eva is returning to her village. Everything fell apart that summer, but this time she’ll be prepared. She has a large block of ice in her car boot and she’s ready to settle the score . . . Part thriller, part coming-of-age novel, The Melting is an extraordinary and unsettling debut from Lize Spit, a reckoning with adolescent cruelty and the scars it leaves.