Kundera praises Hermans
‘If a Dutch friend had not drawn my attention to it, I would be just as unaware as you are’, wrote Milan Kundera, the French author of Czech origin, about Hermans’s novel De donkere kamer van Damocles (The Darkroom of Damocles) in Le monde des livres, the authoritative book supplement of the French daily newspaper Le Monde. Gallimard published the book in the spring of 2006, but it eluded the attention of the French reviewers. Kundera’s article may change all this, as he is full of praise for the novel and its author.
He places the book in the row of books – such as La Pelle (translated as The Skin) by Curzio Malaparte and Tworki by Marek Bienczyk – that are shocking because they cast a different light on the collective memory of the Second World War. Kundera regards The Darkroom as a novel that is ‘permeated with dismal reality but simultaneously surprises with its unexpected and strange occurrences’. Kundera praises Hermans’s style and his capacity to raise the suspense to the extent that the reader cannot put the book down. Reviewers who follow his example will undoubtedly undergo a similar experience.
- read the complete review (tr. Frank Wynne)
