Sunken Red - Hardcover

Brouwers, Jeroen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0941533190 ISBN 13: 9780941533195

Publisher: New Amsterdam Books, 1998

Synopsis

Two epigraphs introduce this wrenching novel. One is taken from Eckermman's "Conversations with Goethe:"
But in his accustomed way, wrapping himself in mystery, he looked at me wide-eyed, and said these words: "The mothers! Mothers! How marvelous that sounds!"

The other is from "The Song of the Dead," from the Southern Celebes:
Seek me while I am here. Know me because I am here. I am here. Yet it is certain that I am not here.

Those flashes of dark light, the alternating current of love and estrangement, are the pulses that have molded an artist and blasted a life. It is clear that the narrator's story of imprisonment with his mother in a Japanese concentration camp during the Second World War–five years old, exploring the camp on a single skate-–is the author's own story, and indeed the story of many of his generation. Strange, and strangely exalting to have made art out of the memory of horror, with a spirit crippled by loss. Strange that a loveless life as an older child in Holland, as a young man, as a man no longer young, can, on the death of the mother from whom he separated himself, raise this paean to what was missing, and find the self-knowledge that lets him glimpse the shape of that woman's spirit and her tragedy.
Jeroen Brouwers is a distinguished Dutch man of letters, the author of four novels, a play, and several volumes of biography, autobiography, and literary history.

About this title

About the Author

Jeroen Brouwers, a distinguished Dutch man of letters, is the author of four novels, a play, and several volumes of biography, autobiography, and literary history.

Language Notes

Text: English, Dutch (translation)

Edition details

• Publisher: New Amsterdam Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0941533190
• ISBN 13: 9780941533195
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 144