Writersblog

Salomon Kroonenberg

Salomon Kroonenberg, Dutch writer

The Dutch programme at the International Book Fair in Beijing was cunn... >>> read more

Henk Pröpper

Henk Pröpper, Director Dutch Foundation for Literature

In two weeks’ time, the official opening of one of the largest b... >>> read more

Kai Kang

Kai Kang, Journalist China Reading Weekly

Dear Dutch publishers. The book fair is over. Perhaps you’ll now... >>> read more

Ingrid and Dieter Schubert

Ingrid and Dieter Schubert, Dutch illustrators

The days are full and long. We are incessantly bombarded with impressi... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

Arriving on the stand on the first day, I’d asked a Chinese visi... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

Big excitement today since we were finally meeting with Songyu from Fl... >>> read more

Ingrid and Dieter Schubert

Ingrid and Dieter Schubert, Dutch illustrators

It’s now the third day, and the first one with plenty of sun. Un... >>> read more

Kai Kang

Kai Kang, Journalist China Reading Weekly

What a great opportunity to learn about the Dutch literature for Chine... >>> read more

Salomon Kroonenberg

Salomon Kroonenberg, Dutch writer

A duck flies to and fro over the vast expanses of world ocean, despera... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

‘In the era of browsing, we provide reading.’ - Slogan see... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

The jewel in the crown of our collection of Arbeiderspers titles publi... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

The Chinese publishers I have met during the course of my career, the ... >>> read more

Salomon Kroonenberg

Salomon Kroonenberg, Dutch writer

I have so far never been to a book fair. Nor do I know what to imagine... >>> read more

Kai Kang

Kai Kang, Journalist China Reading Weekly

Since 2006, I began writing about the Netherlands’ performance a... >>> read more

Henk Pröpper

Henk Pröpper, Director Dutch Foundation for Literature

Now that the fair is just round the corner, this is perhaps the moment... >>> read more

Michele Hutchison

Michele Hutchison, Editor De Arbeiderspers

The traffic in Beijing is horrendous, I’m sure the other blogger... >>> read more

Thomas Möhlmann

Thomas Möhlmann, Staff member Dutch Foundation for Literature

What an evening the poets and the approximately 200 onlookers present ... >>> read more


Harry Mulisch - The Stone Bridal Bed

Harry Mulisch - The Stone Bridal Bed

In The Stone Bridal Bed Harry Mulisch describes what J.M. Coetzee has called ‘the peculiarly male pleasure in violation, a joy in destruction that is to be found as much among Homer’s Greeks as among the American airmen who bombed Dresden’. The Stone Bridal Bed takes the form of a classical tragedy, complete with Homeric songs chronicling the epic struggle.

Thirteen years after the war, Norman Corinth, a dentist from Baltimore, returns to the German city of Dresden, destroyed in a firestorm ignited by Allied bombing. Corinth took part in that bombing as an aerial gunner and did not come through unscathed; his face still bears traces of burns he suffered when his plane was shot down.

Mulisch ingeniously links the taking of the city with the taking of a woman, Hella, with whom Corinth has a brief affair. She is the embodiment of the mythical Helen, whose abduction led to the Trojan War and who, like Troy, was destroyed and abandoned. Lust and the desire for conquest lead Corinth to a bridal bed that – once the fire of passion has cooled – turns into a stone-cold tomb.

The Second World War has strongly influenced Harry Mulisch’s thinking and writing, as demonstrated by the way he draws on the Eichmann trial in The Case 40/61 (1962), the German occupation of The Netherlands in The Assault (1985) and, more recently, the figure of Hitler’s fictional son in Siegfried (2003).

Biography

Harry Mulisch (1927-2010) was born to a Jewish mother and a half-German, half-Austrian father who divorced his wife in 1937. His father was joint director of a banking firm that acted as a repository for stolen Jewish funds. ‘I didn’t so much “experience” the war,’ Mulisch once famously wrote, ‘I am the Second World War.’

QUOTES

  • ‘Mulisch is a rarity for these times – an instinctively psychological novelist.’ – John Updike, The New Yorker
  • ‘Harry Mulisch belongs to the first rank of Dutch novelists of his generation.’ – J.M.Coetzee