Sorrow of Belgium FROM THE PUBLISHER
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.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
As the war rages and ebbs in occupied Belgium between 1939 and 1947, Louis is struggling through the trials of adolescence. Knowledge in all its forms is his personal battleground as he moves from the sheltered world of the convent school to the chaos of death, internment, and reunification. His family, staunchly Flemish, collaborates willingly with the Germans. His pompous father hints at Gestapo connections, his bored mother blossoms in her new responsibility for German munitions, and the rest of his extended family lies enthralled by Nazi ``discipline and order.'' Laced through everything is the constant tension between the Flemish and French linguistic and cultural traditions. Claus's well-written novel of discovery is a fine depiction of life under occupation that offers American readers a fresh perspective of events during the war. While its innovative structure makes for some tedious moments, it finally succeeds through its careful attention to Louis's changing awareness in a dynamic time.-- Paul E. Hutchison, Fishermans Paradise, Bellefonte, Pa.
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