Novel
The Darkroom of Damocles
De donkere kamer van Damokles
Willem Frederik Hermans · 1958
Synopsis
Under the occupation, Henri Osewoudt, a small cigar merchant in Voorschoten, beardless and too short for military service, meets Dorbeck, a man who looks exactly like him, only better, and who claims to be in the resistance. Won over, Osewoudt carries out the orders that reach him by telephone, by post, through unknown messengers: attacks on the Gestapo and on collaborators, even to the point of killing innocent people. Dorbeck himself appears only by fits and starts.
Context
The novel was published in November 1958 by Van Oorschot and at once caused a stir: critics praised its mastery, but reproached it for its deliberate cynicism and the image it gave of the Resistance. Commentators have since argued over a point the book does not settle, the very existence of Dorbeck. It has been translated twice into English, by Roy Edwards in 1962 and by Ina Rilke in 2007, and into French by Daniel Cunin, from Gallimard, in 2006.
Who it is for
A novel of about three hundred and fifty pages in Dutch, driven like a suspense novel. It can be read in French and English.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the great novels of the Second World War and constantly reprinted; fifth in the Dutch canon survey of 2002, with fifty-seven votes.