The Darkroom Of Damocles

By the acclaimed Dutch author of Beyond Sleep: a thriller set in Nazi occupied Holland: “fast-moving, frighteningly real yet verging on the incredible” (Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being). During the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt is visited by a mysterious man named Dorbeck—a man who bears a strangely striking resemblance to Osewoudt himself. Dorbeck recruits him to perform simple, but top-secret missions on orders from London. But as the assignments keep coming, they get increasingly dangerous. Soon Osewoudt is being asked to commit murder in the name of Gestapo resistance. After the war, Osewoudt is taken for a traitor and captured. To prove his sacrifices for the Resistance, he must find the untraceable doppelgänger in an existential thriller “crackling with tension . . . bringing to mind Camus and the Sartre of Les Chemins de la Liberté” (The Telegraph). “Striking, suspenseful . . . Brilliant.” —The Observer

“In this moving tragicomedy,” an academic hoping to secure his reputation gains “self-knowledge . . . achieved at great cost” in this literary novel. (Publishers Weekly) Alfred Issendorf is a Dutch geology student obsessed with the thought of dying without a major scientific discovery to his name. Setting off on a geological expedition which brings him to Norway, Issendorf is out to prove that craters in the landscape are actually holes caused by the impact of meteorites. But his trip quickly turns sour: the unearthly atmosphere of the midnight sun makes him paranoid; nights are too hot; clouds of mosquitoes steal his sleep; he is exhausted. Suspicion takes over and he sees secret plots against his scientific work by everyone and everything. Haunted by down-and-out scientists, the ghost of his dead father, and apparitions of ancient animals, Issendorf's character is both naïve and cynical, ambitious and distrustful, grandiose and talentless and his story is one of adventure and discovery, psychology and pride. Beyond Sleep is a classic of post-war European literature: the saga of a man at the limits of the civilized world. “An exceptionally well-crafted novel. . . . [the characters are] wryly funny, and in that lies the novel's brilliance. —Booklist “An unusual and intriguing book, and a welcome introduction to the work of a neglected 20th-century master. —Kirkus Reviews "A novel of worldly disengagement trembling on the edge of tragedy, all the more comic for being related in Hermans' best poker-faced manner" —J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize Laureate

“Profoundly unsettling . . . haunt[s] the mind for long afterwards.” —The Sunday Times “The kind of book that stays with you forever.” —The Guardian “Hugely entertaining." —The Scotsman A Sunday Times Book of the Year: A brooding meditation on violence set during World War II—from a classic Dutch writer who has drawn comparisons to Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut In this mesmerizing, dark meditation on the legacy of war, an interloper and opportunist makes a grand house of his own in the chaos of a war-torn countryside—only to find himself involved with occupying forces and enraged locals.

A classic pitch-black wartime thriller from the author of An Untouched House.

"Born in Berlin in 1891, John Heartfield grew up in Germany during the formative years of the main modern movements: Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, each of which contributed recognisably to the photomontages for which he would become famous. Sharply critical of the Weimar Republic in which he flourished, in Germany his work was banned for the duration of Hitler's Third Reich. In London, where he lived as an anti-Fascist exile throughout the Second World War, he remained an outsider till after his return to East Germany in 1950, It is only since the 1970s that he has become a European, if not a world figure."--Cover

The story of a tempestuous love affair—and the basis for Paul Verhoeven's Oscar-nominated film—Wolkers's controversial masterpiece comes alive in a new translation. Upon its original publication in 1969, Turkish Delight was a sensation and a scandal. Its graphic language and explicit sex scenes had an explosive effect, but just as revolutionary was its frank, colloquial style. The more straightlaced critics condemned the book, but readers saw a novel that reflected the way that they spoke, thought, and felt. Turkish Delight opens with a screed: a sculptor in his studio, raging against the love he lost and describing, in gory detail, the state of his life since she left him. Our narrator alternates between the story of his relationship with Olga—its passion and affection, but also its obsessiveness and abuse—and the dark days that followed, as he attempts to recapture what they had when they lived together, “happy as beasts.” The two only reunite during Olga’s inexorable and tragic decline into cancer—the chemo having taken her hair and rotted her teeth, she will only eat the soft, sweet Turkish Delight that her ex-lover brings to her bedside. In a new translation by Sam Garrett (Herman Koch’s The Dinner), readers get a sense of Wolkers’s revolutionary style and musical prose, Turkish Delight’s particular balance of naked impulse and profound longing. Tin House Books gratefully acknowledges the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, whose generous subsidy made this new translation possible.

THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF A POSTWAR MASTERPIECE 'I work in an office. I take cards out of a file. Once I have taken them out, I put them back in again. That is it.' Twenty-three-year-old Frits - office worker, daydreamer, teller of inappropriate jokes - finds life absurd and inexplicable. He lives with his parents, who drive him mad. He has terrible, disturbing dreams of death and destruction. Sometimes he talks to a toy rabbit. This is the story of ten evenings in Frits's life at the end of December, as he drinks, smokes, sees friends, aimlessly wanders the gloomy city street and tries to make sense of the minutes, hours and days that stretch before him. Darkly funny and mesmerising, The Evenings takes the tiny, quotidian triumphs and heartbreaks of our everyday lives and turns them into a work of brilliant wit and profound beauty.

'The stories here will provoke, delight and impress. Joost Zwagerman's selection forms a fascinating guidebook to a landscape you'll surely want to wander in again.' Clare Lowden, TLS 'There is a lot of northern European melancholy in the collection, though often tinged with wry humour...an excellent book' Jonathan Gibbs, Minor Literatures 'We were kids - but good kids. If I may say so myself. We're much smarter now, so smart it's pathetic. Except for Bavink, who went crazy' A husband forms gruesome plans for his new fridge; a government employee has a haunting experience on his commute home; prisoners serve as entertainment for wealthy party guests; an army officer suffers a monstrous tropical illness. These short stories contain some of the most groundbreaking and innovative writing in Dutch literature from 1915 to the present day, with most pieces appearing here in English for the first time. Blending unforgettable snapshots of the realities of everyday life with surrealism, fantasy and subversion, this collection shows Dutch writing to be an integral part of world literary history. Joost Zwagerman (1963-2015) was a novelist, poet, essayist and editor of several anthologies. He started his career as a writer with bestselling novels, describing the atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Gimmick!(1988) and False Light (1991). In later years, he concentrated on writing essays - notably on pop culture and visual arts - and poetry. Suicide was the theme of the novel Six Stars (2002). He took his own life just after having published a new collection of essays on art, The Museum of Light.