PhilPaine.com

This is a rea­son­ably inter­est­ing nov­el, though not eco­nom­i­cally writ­ten. It’s a sprawl­ing omnibus of digres­sions, com­bin­ing fan­tasy, mys­ti­cism, pol­i­tics and a kind of Jules et Jim tri­an­gle romance. Mulisch is intel­li­gent, learned, and absolute­ly sat­u­rated with con­ven­tional sys­tems and intel­lec­tual ortho­doxy. There is a lot of thought in this book, but not a par­ti­cle of orig­i­nal thought. This is, unfor­tu­nately, sup­posed to be the great mas­ter­piece of mod­ern Dutch lit­er­a­ture. Well, the Dutch have blessed the world with won­der­ful paint­ing and archi­tec­ture, and their trance djs are superb, but lit­er­a­ture just doesn’t seem to be their strong point. Nev­er­the­less, I might rec­om­mend it for a lazy afternoon’s read­ing. The inter­ac­tion of the char­ac­ters is some­times interesting.