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A Family Occupation investigates Dutch-language texts by well-known authors which address the occupation and its aftermath in the lives of victims, collaborators, bystanders and Dutch internees in the prison-camps of Indonesia. It is the first English-language introduction to writings by and about the "Children of War" and their cultural context. Their themes and literary conventions throw an interesting light on the Dutch approach to issues such as guilt and innocence, memory and narrative, national identity, victimhood, child abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, amnesia and recovered memory.
An autobiographical novel based on the author's childhood concentration-camp imprisonment in Japanese-occupied Indonesia in WWII.
Told with an aching beauty...Sunken Red is a cathartic achievement in which we watch Mr. Brouwers emerge from the walking dead.D>--The New York Times Book Review
Autobiographical writings have been a major cultural genre from antiquity to the present time. General questions of the literary as, e.g., the relation between literature and reality, truth and fiction, the dependency of author, narrator, and figure, or issues of individual and cultural styles etc., can be studied preeminently in the autobiographical genre. Yet, the tradition of life-writing has, in the course of literary history, developed manifold types and forms. Especially in the globalized age, where the media and other technological / cultural factors contribute to a rapid transformation of lifestyles, autobiographical writing has maintained, even enhanced, its popularity and importanc...
An all inclusive study of Netherlandic culture.
Following their invasion of Java on March 1, 1942, the Japanese began a process of Japanization of the archipelago, banning every remnant of Dutch rule. Over the next three years, more than 100,000 Dutch citizens were shipped to Japanese internment camps and more than four million romushas, forced Indonesian laborers, were enlisted in the Japanese war effort. The Japanese occupation stimulated the development of Indonesian independence movements. Headed by Sukarno, a longtime admirer of Japan, nationalist forces declared their independence on August 17, 1945. For Dutch citizens, Dutch-Indonesians or "Indos," and pro-Dutch Indonesians, Sukarno's declaration marked the beginning of a new wave of terror. These powerful and often poignant stories from survivors of the Japanese occupation and subsequent turmoil surrounding Indonesian independence provide one with a vivid portrait of the hardships faced during the period.
Hafid Bouazza is a highly influential and celebrated author in the Netherlands today. In the context of contemporary Dutch literature, Bouazza's Moroccan background still marks a divergence from the born-and-bred Dutch norm. Authors with a bi- or multicultural background are still often cast in the role of 'exotic outsider'. Bouazza both challenges and uses this position to the full. His writing demonstrates that the perceived us-them or self-other positions are questionable ideological constructs. He undermines the concept of a unified culture and the wholeness of the self. He explores and exploits stereotypical beliefs held on both sides of the East-West divide. The result is a magical realist setting that both puzzles and enchants. This book offers a reading of Bouazza's literary prose that responds to the interpretative opportunities offered by an author who skilfully and creatively explores his peculiar freedom in his Homeless Entertainment.
Like a number of Netherlanders in the post-World War II era, Inez Hollander only gradually became aware of her family's connections with its Dutch colonial past, including a Creole great-grandmother. For the most part, such personal stories have been, if not entirely silenced, at least only whispered about in Holland, where society has remained uncomfortable with many aspects of the country's relationship with its colonial empire. Unlike the majority of memoirs that are soaked in nostalgia for tempo dulu, Hollander's story sets out to come to grips with her family's past by weaving together personal records with historical and literary accounts of the period. She seeks not merely to locate and preserve family memories, but also to test them against a more disinterested historical record. Hers is a complicated and sometimes painful personal journey of realization, unusually mindful of the ways in which past memories and present considerations can be intermingled when we seek to understand a difficult past. Silenced Voices is an important contribution to the literature on how Dutch society has dealt with its recent colonial history.
An authoritative volume that is the first literary history of the Netherlands and Flanders in English since the 1970s
In History as a Theological Issue Nico Bakker analyses seminal conceptions of history from the past and from our day, and compares them with the newest notions of history in biblical and systematic theology. In so doing he engages in conversation with thinkers from Augustine to Popper, along with many others, including Barth, Pannenberg, and the Dutch reformed theologians Miskotte and Breukelman.