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Secretly Inside by Hans Warren is a Minor Dutch Hiding Narrative

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“Couldn’t they have found a safe house for him that was a bit more…safe?” (94) The UW-Madison press tends to focus on hidden gems and scholarly texts, so I was particularly excited to receive their English translation of Secretly Inside , a novella by Dutch author Hans Warren. It belongs to the subgenre of Dutch hiding narratives, which follow Jewish protagonists as they try to remain undetected in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The most famous example of the genre, Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl , is a nonfiction primary source, but other accounts are fictionalized and written after-the-fact. There are several reasons why such a specific premise might be popular in the Netherlands. For one, the tension of hiding and escape keeps readers hooked like a more conventional thriller, founded in real history. Hiding narratives also contribute to Dutch Remberance Culture, promoting tolerance and empathy without depicting the well-known atrocities of the Eastern Front. Furthermore, because
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Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki is a Nostalgic Goldmine

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“Perhaps…we will long for the time when we all lay around in the hay and our desires were so fluid and uncertain that they were no longer our own. They became the air we breathed; a thought of Maria’s became mine and mine Infanta’s — a kind of unearthly communion.” (135) From the opposite shore of the last century, Margarita Liberaki’s coming-of-age novel reconjures a lost world. When Three Summers was published in 1946, its idyllic Attic landscape and quiet affairs had been swept away by half a decade of fascist occupation. But Liberaki is not interested in a sweeping commentary or a gripping plot. Instead, she seeks to rescue a handful of moments from the Lethe. Her narrator, Katerina, proves a suitable vessel for memories. Neither as boy-crazy as her eldest sister Maria nor as isolated as the artistic Infanta, she observes the quiet drama of her rural milieu with adolescent curiosity. The novel follows her as she and her family discover love, heartbreak, and their own troubled hist
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Weekly Recap August 15-August 20 2021

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I regret to inform you, fellow readers, that summer has come to an end. With it must die my summer review format. In this final week of summer reading, I finished six books: Shadow and Act by Ralph Ellison The author of Invisible Man reflects on literature, music and society in immaculate prose essays. While not every work is as great as “On Bird, Bird-Watching and Jazz,” which inspired me to pick up this collection, each reveals the internal rhythms of a superb writer and critic. “In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live” (187) Silence by Shūsaku Endō During the Tokugawa persecutions, two Portuguese Jesuits venture into the Japanese “swamp” in search of a mentor rumored to have abandoned the faith. The intense, melancholy themes presented by Endō are stifled by a too-conventional translation. “On the day of my death, too, will the world go relentlessly on its way indifferent as it is now? After I am murdered, will the ci
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Weekly Recap August 8-August 14 2021

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Fellow readers, I feel accomplished. This week, I managed to finish nine books, including one I’ve been reading for more than a month and a half. I even managed to find a new favorite, but the quality of books was overall quite mixed: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler Dana, a Black woman from 1975, is mysteriously and repeatedly transported to antebellum Maryland to save the life of a brutal ancestor. With plain, brutal prose and a gripping plot, Butler’s most famous work makes an uneasy home between science fiction, historical mystery and enduring political literature. “There had to be some kind of reason for the link he and I seemed to have. Not that I really thought a blood relationship could explain the way I had twice been drawn to him…What we had was something new, something that didn’t even have a name. Some matching strangeness in us that may or may not have come from our being related” (29) The Welkin by Lucy Kirkwood When a murderess pleads the belly, a jury of twelve matrons mu
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Weekly Recap August 1-August 7 2021

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Fellow Readers, I’ve already started planning my travel reading—starting with Swann’s Way on the plane. But my first priority is clearing my physical TBR. Even though I could have done better this week, I am pretty happy with the books I read: Teahouse by Lao She In a three-act play with an ensemble cast, a Beijing tea house and its proprietors must adapt to the political changes of the early 20th century. Although its pro-communist ending means that I’ll never see the play performed in English, the humor, strong characters and social commentary shine through in John Howard-Gibbon’s translation. “WANG LIFA: Reform! I’ve never forgotten about reform…what the hell if I lost a little face, a man has to live, hasn't he? I tried anything and everything, but only so we could live. It’s the truth. Sure I bribed people when I had to, but I never did anything unjust or immoral. Don’t I deserve a normal life? Who have I wronged? Who?” (106) Search Sweet Country by Kojo Laing The intertwin
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(Bi)Weekly Recap Jul 18-July 31 2021

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  Fellow readers, I apologize for my absence last week. On Saturday the 24, I had just picked up Thomas Mann’s Joseph and his Brothers , the largest book I’ve read to date. I spent the rest of the week finishing it, so I hope I can make up for lost time with this bi-weekly recap: Trying to Find Chinatown by David Henry Hwang The lesser-known plays of the Asian American playwright behind M. Butterfly . None of these works are as mature as the one that made Hwang famous, but each contains the flashes of cynicism and empathy that illuminate his best work. “MA: If I dont get rich here, I might as well die here. Let my brothers laugh in peace...I’ve got to change myself. Toughen up. Take no shit. Count my change. Learn to gamble. Learn to win. Learn to stare. Learn to deny. Earn to look at men with opaque eyes…’Cause I’ve got the fear. You’ve given it to me” (87) Everywhere You Don’t Belong by Gabriel Bump Claude McKay Love, an ordinary Black teenager from South Shore, struggles to find h
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