The Cave - Hardcover

Tim Krabbé

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374119783 ISBN 13: 9780374119782

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000

Synopsis

A stunning psychological thriller about friship, drugs, and murder from the author of The Vanishing.

Egon Wagter and Axel van de Graaf met when they were both fourteen and on vacation in Belgium. Axel is fascinating, filled with an amoral energy by which the more prudent, less adventurous Egon is both mesmerized and repelled. Even as a teen, Axel has a strange power over those around him. He defies authority, seduces women, breaks the law. Axel chooses Egon as a friend, a friendship that somehow ures over time and ends up determining Egon's fate.

During his university studies, Egon frequents Axel's house in Amsterdam, where there is a party every night and women fill the rooms. Though Egon chooses geology over Axel's life of avarice and drug dealing, he remains intrigued by his friend's conviction that the only law that counts is the law he makes himself. Egon believes that Axel is a demonic figure who tempts others only because he knows they want to be tempted. By the time he is in his forties, Egon finds himself divorced and with few professional prospects. He turns for help to Axel, who sends him to Ratanakiri, a fictional country in Southeast Asia. Axel gives Egon a suitcase to deliver-and Egon never returns.

Utterly compelling and resonant, The Cave is an unforgettable story of betrayal in the spirit of Tim Krabbé's remarkable first novel, The Vanishing.

About this title

About the Author

Tim Krabbe is the author of The Vanishing which was made into an award-winning film. The Cave was a bestseller in The Netherlands. He lives in Amsterdam.

Reviews

Krabb , a Dutch writer living in Amsterdam, published a sophisticated horror novel, The Golden Egg, seven years ago, which was made into a movie, The Vanishing. His second novel is likewise a cleverly wrought tale of death and suspense, but it's one that falls outside the ordinary formulas of horror or suspense fiction. It tells the psychologically fraught story of three individuals who meet as adolescents and whose lives intertwine in various ways. The linchpin of the tale is Axel van de Graaf, who from childhood is the kind of unpleasantly charismatic figure who attracts people against their will and better judgment. As a child, Axel is an independent daredevil; as an adult, he becomes successful in the violent underworld of international drug smuggling. He befriends the novel's protagonist, Egon Wagter, at summer camp in Belgium. It's a strange relationship from the outset: Axel seems to love and admire Egon, who is at best boring and unimaginative. Egon is drawn into orbit around Axel at camp, and in later life is unable to break loose. Eventually, Egon's modest life falls apart. His wife leaves him (she also once was drawn to Axel's more vivid existence), and he proves to be a failure as a geologist. When the opportunity for adventure presents itself, he eagerly seizes the chance to travel to South America with a scientific expedition. But he needs money to participate, so Axel agrees to let humdrum Egon act as a drug courier to a Southeast Asian country, where capital punishment for drug offenses is common. There Egon meets an American woman to whom he is as spookily drawn as he has always been drawn to Axel. Her story unfolds from the novel's midpoint onward, and in a surprising finish, Krabb draws the strands of his tale together in the novel's eponymous cave. This writer's art is one of indirection and understatement. His fine, spare prose weaves a seamless web of vividly imagined reality, and his grasp of daily life in Holland, Massachusetts and Southeast Asia is completely persuasive a tribute no doubt in part to the work of his translator. (Oct.) FYI: A film version of The Cave will be released in November.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Can a single encounter with evil poison an entire life? Dutch writer Krabbe (whose earlier suspense novel, The Golden Egg, was made into the film The Vanishing ) provides us with a hero, a promising student turned successful geologist turned alienated drug smuggler, who puzzles out this question for most of his life. After showing us what narrator Egon Wagter has become, waiting for an appointment he knows can end his life, Krabbe revisits a student exploration of Belgian caves, when the young Egon met another young student, Axel, an obvious sociopath. This meeting, other accidental meetings, and scraps of news about the casually evil Axel forms the central fascination of Egon's life. While crime plays a role in this novel, the chief suspense comes from watching how Egon's obsession deforms his actions. The Cave is Kafkaesque in its exquisite examination of a man doomed by his own thoughts. Connie Fletcher
Copyright Š American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374119783
• ISBN 13: 9780374119782
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160