Novel
Terug tot Ina Damman
Not translated into English
Simon Vestdijk · 1934
Synopsis
Anton Wachter, whose father has just died, spends his first years at the middle school in Lahringen. Mocked by his classmates, caught up in the rivalries of the boys, he stands between the coarse Gerrit Bolhuis and Greve, a distant teacher whom he venerates in silence. Then he falls in love with Ina Damman, a girl at school who bewitches him and transforms the whole world for him, without his ever daring to confess to her the strength of what he feels.
Context
The novel is drawn from a first manuscript written in 1933 and rejected by publishers, which provided the material for the first volumes of the cycle devoted to Anton Wachter. Third volume in the order of the narrative, it was the first to be published, in 1934, by Nijgh & Van Ditmar. Lahringen is an anagram of Harlingen, and Ina Damman is modelled on a schoolmate, Lies Koning, who recognised herself on reading it. Menno ter Braak reviewed it on 2 December 1934 in Het Vaderland.
Who it is for
A novel in Dutch in which almost nothing happens and everything takes place in the mind of an adolescent. No French or English translation in volume form exists.
Prizes and reception
One of the most popular novels by its author, who later wrote that his whole existence as an artist had come out of it.