Willem Frederik Hermans

Under den tyska ockupationen av Nederländerna dras tobaksägaren Henri Osewoudt med i motståndsrörelsen. Han rekryteras av den handlingskraftige Dorbeck och ges farliga uppdrag som han utför utan att tveka. Han framkallar illegala mörkrumsfilmer, samarbetar med brittiska spioner och likviderar oönskade motståndare. Han grips av tyskarna, flyr, fångas igen – det blir allt svårare för honom att orientera sig i tillvaron. Han har själv flera namn. Vilket är hans riktiga? Mörkrummet är en storartad roman om andra världskriget skriven med spionthrillerns alla klassiska ingredienser. Boken upphäver gränserna mellan verklighet och mardröm och utmanar läsarens egen moral och verklighetsuppfattning. WILLEM FREDERIK HERMANS (1921–1995) räknas som en av efterkrigstidens främsta nederländska författare. Han tog starkt intryck av krigsåren och den tyska ockupationen vilket han skildrar i flera av sina böcker. Mörkrummet räknas som en av hans främsta romaner och har på senare år återupptäckts och utkommit i nya upplagor på flera språk.

Willem Frederik Hermans's lucid and exhilarating WWII masterpiece in a razor-sharp translation by David Colmer A Guardian Angel Recalls is a gripping and diabolical wartime novel by one of the most provocative Dutch writers of the twentieth-century. Alberegt, a frenzied and lovelorn public prosecutor, speeds through Hook of Holland in his black Renault on May 9, 1940 - the eve of the German invasion of the Netherlands. Guiding his every move is a guardian angel. With unflappable patience, the angel flits from the hood of the Renault to the rim of his windswept hat, determined to quell his every anxiety and doubt. The angel's momentary distraction, however, sets off a chain of events that spins a nightmarish web. Alberegt's elusive companion serves both as narrator and meddlesome driver of the plot, though not without the interventions of a rotating cast of devils.

On the eve of the Second World War a public attorney, devastated because his Jewish lover has fled without him, runs over a young girl. He is torn by grief at the loss of his girlfriend and guilt about the accident - which is shrouded in a mystery that he attempts to unravel while the world around him collapses. In the meantime, he is watched over by a guardian angel, who whispers him warnings, and by a devil, who does the same... A Guardian Angel Recalls is a thrilling and provocative war novel, from one of the greatest Dutch authors of the twentieth century.

A young geologist hungry for fame journeys to the mountains of Norway's Arctic north on a research expedition, but soon realizes he's more likely be eaten alive by mosquitoes than win glory. Freezing, wet and plagued by insomnia, Alfred becomes increasingly desperate and paranoid under the midnight sun, until he takes a catastrophic decision. This dazzlingly dark classic is at once a gripping survival story, a mordant farce and a peerless evocation of mental disintegration.

During the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt finds himself drawn into the resistance when he is visited by the ruthless Dorbeck, who also happens to look remarkably like him. Soon Osewoudt is carrying out dangerous missions, helping British agents and killing collaborators with aplomb. But after the war, he is taken for a collaborator himself. How can he prove that he was on the right side - and how much of what he remembers is real? The Darkroom of Damocles is a razor-sharp thriller set in a world where everything is permitted, even murder. As unsettling and morally challenging today as when it was first written.

A partisan fighting with the Red Army in Germany comes across a grand, abandoned house, seemingly untouched by the devastation sweeping the country. Exhausted, he falls asleep in the living room, but wakes to find a German patrol marching up the garden path. His only hope is to pose as the house's owner, but how will he keep up the pretence when the real owner returns? Dazzling, dark and scorchingly violent, with the breakneck pace of a thriller, this timeless classic is a vivid depiction of what happens when the mask of decency is cast aside in the savagery of war.

A deadpan comedy often subtly calling up the works of Heller or Vonnegut at their best, Willem Frederik Hermans's Beyond Sleep is a unique and illuminating examination of how hard it is to be a true pioneer in the modern world. "The language is dry; the socks are wet; the compass is lost. A masterpiece." --Roddy Doyle The young Dutch geologist Alfred Issendorf is determined to win fame for making a great discovery. To this end he joins a small geological expedition, which travels to the far north of Norway, where he hopes to prove a series of craters were caused by meteorites, but ultimately realizes he's more likely to drown in a fjord or be eaten by parasites. Unable to procure crucial aerial photographs, and beset by mosquitoes and insomnia in his freezing leaky tent, Alfred becomes increasingly desperate and paranoid. Haunted by the ghost of his scientist father, unable to escape the looming influence of his mother, and anxious to complete the thesis that will make his name, he moves toward the final act of vanity which will trigger a catastrophe.