(G.A. van Oorschot, 1948, 422 pages)

This may be the most contrarian war novel ever. It is the masterpiece of a young author who came out of the war with a vision of human nature as dark as the night and a determination to turn that vision into literature. The book opens with the unlikely friendship between Oskar Ossegal, a forty-year-old chemist, and Arthur Muttah, a chemistry student. The latter is practically an orphan and regards Oskar as a surrogate father.

(De Bezige Bij, 1951, 80 pages)

Without a doubt, the Second World War is a central theme in the work of Willem Frederik Hermans. His is a remarkable, unflinching oeuvre driven by the dark world-view that civilization as we know it is only a thin veneer covering the monstrousness of human nature. In this peerless novella, Hermans offers a chilling dissection of the horror that ensues when the mask of decency is cast aside in the savagery of war.

(G.A. van Oorschot, 1958, 334 pages)

Willem Frederik Hermans was an adolescent in Amsterdam during the Second World War, a period that made an indelible impression on him, compounded by his older sister and cousin committing suicide soon after the German invasion in 1940. Hermans often chooses the war as backdrop for his novels, since it is an environment in which malice and misunderstanding, and the pointlessness of our existence can best be brought to the surface. The Darkroom of Damocles is no exception.

(De Bezige Bij, 1966, 265 pages)

Beyond Sleep is the oppressive story, of young geologist Alfred Issendorf. Like all scientists, he dreams of fame and immortality. Along with a young geologist called Arne and two assistants, he sets off for the North Cape on a research trip, intending to prove that the region’s lakes were created by meteorites.

(De Bezige Bij, 1971, 416 pages)

The central theme in Willem Frederik Hermans’ work is the Second World War. It was the perfect setting for his novels and stories, one that allowed him to express his outlook on life: in wartime the true, self-destructive nature of mankind emerges from beneath the thin veneer of civilization that, during times of peace, we take to be the whole story. In 2021, this classic novel – considered by Hermans to be one of his best – is appearing in English translation for the first time.

(De Bezige Bij, 1989, 415 pages)

Pauline, a Dutch student, wishes to study in Paris and gets a job as an au pair. At the first family she works for, she lives in a miserable little attic room and they make her pay for her breakfasts. In the second family there is an old general, his wife, sons, a grandson and a number of servants. There she is living on Easy Street: she has a beautiful room, clothes, shoes, whatever she desires. She really does not have to lift a finger for anything. Every so often she listens to the general’s stories about the war and about the artist Guys, who has also worked in her home town of Vlissingen.

(De Bezige Bij, 1993, 96 pages)

Willem Frederik Hermans generally makes no attempt to make a secret of his opinions. On the subject of the diary as a literary form, he is on record as describing it as insipid realism, a cheap way to produce a text: “Everything can be coincidental, nothing has to be rounded off.?