Author

Gerrit Kouwenaar

Gerrit Kouwenaar (1923 - 2014) was one of the giants of Dutch postwar literature. He was part of the Vijftigers (‘Fifties’) literary movement associated with the CoBrA art collective, which effected the modernisation of Dutch poetry from 1948 onwards. In the early 1950s, Kouwenaar wrote three novels about the Second World War, challenging the cheap heroism that had characterised accounts of the occupation to that point. His work was honoured with all the major literary awards, including the P.C. Hooft Award and the Dutch Literature Prize.

The Poetry of Gerrit Kouwenaar

(Querido, )

In retrospect, Gerrit Kouwenaar turned out to be the 50s Movement’s most influential poet. His poetry won many literary prizes (including the P.C. Hooft Prize in 1970), but was initially only deeply admired by a small group of connoisseurs. Despite this, his reputation grew and by the eighties he was generally seen as the godfather of autonomist or hermetic poetry, the phrase the Kouwenaar School was often used. The poetry of important poets like Hans Faverey, H.C. ten Berge and, later, J. Bernlef is scarcely imaginable without the antecedent of Kouwenaar.

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Fall, Bomb

Fall, Bomb

(Cossee, 1956, 120 pages)

In Fall, Bomb Gerrit Kouwenaar, in prose as precise as it is witty, draws the reader into the mind of a young man whose life is turned upside down by the Second World War. His story starts like a boy’s adventure novel but ends in loss and loneliness. Along with contempo­raries like Willem Frederik Hermans, Kouwenaar brought the period of the German occupation of the Netherlands to life with searing honesty; his work drew comparisons to Sartre and Gide.

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