Sunken Red is a harrowing story based on the author’s own experiences in a Japanese concentration camp, interwoven with memories of an idyllic childhood in the Netherlands.

Sunken Red

Literature & Fiction

Brouwers, Jeroen

British & Irish

Peter Owen Publishers

Two epigraphs introduce this wrenching novel. One is taken from Eckermman's "Conversations with Goethe:"But in his accustomed way, wrapping himself in mystery, he looked at me wide-eyed, and said these words: "The mothers! Mothers! How marvelous that sounds!"The other is from "The Song of the Dead," from the Southern Celebes:Seek me while I am here. Know me because I am here. I am here. Yet it is certain that I am not here.Those flashes of dark light, the alternating current of love and estrangement, are the pulses that have molded an artist and blasted a life. It is clear that the narrator's story of imprisonment with his mother in a Japanese concentration camp during the Second World War–five years old, exploring the camp on a single skate-–is the author's own story, and indeed the story of many of his generation. Strange, and strangely exalting to have made art out of the memory of horror, with a spirit crippled by loss. Strange that a loveless life as an older child in Holland, as a young man, as a man no longer young, can, on the death of the mother from whom he separated himself, raise this paean to what was missing, and find the self-knowledge that lets him glimpse the shape of that woman's spirit and her tragedy.Jeroen Brouwers is a distinguished Dutch man of letters, the author of four novels, a play, and several volumes of biography, autobiography, and literary history.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

New Amsterdam Books

Told with an aching beauty...Sunken Red is a cathartic achievement in which we watch Mr. Brouwers emerge from the walking dead.-ew York Times Book deview

Sunken Red (Twentieth Century Lives)

Cliënt E. Busken

Contemporary

Atlas-Contact

Hélène Swarth: Haar huwelijk met Frits Lapidoth, 1894-1910 (Open domein) (Dutch Edition)

Arbeiderspers

Zomervlucht (Dutch Edition)

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