Gerard Reve
The Evenings (De avonden)
When the novel De avonden first appeared, Reve was hailed as ‘the voice of a generation’. Since then the book has become a modern classic, continuing to appeal to each succeeding generation. The book revolves around Frits van Egters, twenty-three years old and with a boring office job. The ten chapters depict the last ten days of the year Frits spends with his family, office colleagues and friends.
Van Egters observes his middle-class parents – he still lives at home – with a mixture of compassion and ruthless precision. It is the business-like commentary on the interminably boring daily rituals and the nasty practical jokes he and his friends play that make the story so funny, although the humour has a double edge. Frits’s nightmares, his constant registration of the hopeless passage of time and his declaration of love to the only one who can ease his loneliness, a stuffed toy rabbit, are from another world.
De avonden is a novel in which a young man attempts to exorcise the meaninglessness of his existence, just as the author has tried to do through his literary work.
Publisher
De Bezige Bij
Van Miereveldstraat 1
NL - 1071 DW Amsterdam
TEL. +31 20 305 98 10
FAX +31 20 305 98 24
E-mail: info@debezigebij.nl
Website: www.debezigebij.nl
Rights
Andrew Nurnberg Associates Ltd.
E-mail: contact@andrewnurnberg.com
Website: www.andrewnurnberg.com
Publishing details
De avonden (1947, 222 pp)
Biography
Gerard Reve’s (1923-2006) most widely read book is his first novel De avonden (The Evenings, 1947). The much reprinted and controversial epistolary books Op weg naar het einde (On My Way to the End, 1963) and Nader tot U (Nearer to Thee, 1966), in which Reve opened his heart about his homosexuality and his conversion to Catholicism, were instrumental in establishing the author as a public figure in the Netherlands. Over the years he published a large series of autobiographical epistolary books, and several novels: Oud en eenzaam (Old and Lonely, 1978), Moeder en Zoon (Mother and Son, 1980), Bezorgde Ouders (Parents Worry, 1989). Reve was awarded the P.C. Hooft Prize in 1968 and the Dutch Literature Prize (Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren) in 2001.
Website: www.nadertotreve.nl/