Dirty Hands
Never before has the dry humour and occasional tragedy of office life been described as thoroughly as in this cycle of novels. The appearance of the first two parts, 'Meneer Beerta' (Mr Beerta) and 'Vuile handen' (Dirty Hands) was enough to guarantee the cycle’s status as a classic of Dutch literature. The books mercilessly describe the frivolity, the petty irritations and teasing, the conniving and crawling, the hierarchy, the unnatural suppression of emotion, and the alienation that insidiously strengthens its hold on people over the years in which they are obliged to spend their days together in a closed room.
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Original title
Vuile handen (Het Bureau 2)
Author
J.J. Voskuil
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'Het bureau' is beyond a doubt the absolute literary sensation of the last thirty years.
Theodor Holman, Het Parool
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What makes the novel so special is the way it magnifies human failing. The Bureau is the universe in a pocket edition, an allegory for society. The fact that there is still plenty to laugh at, mainly because of the sublime style and the often comic dialogue, makes human fate bearable.
Jury’s Report Libris Literature Prize 1997
Despite the honest, diary-like, unadorned style which clearly betrays the spirit of Alberts, Elsschot and Nescio - and could one ask for better writers as guardian angels? - the novel ultimately reveals an exceedingly sophisticated construction.
H. Brandt Corstius, NRC Handelsblad
J.J. Voskuil
J.J. Voskuil (1926-2008) stands alone in Dutch literature. In 1963 he published 'Bij nader inzien' (On Second Thoughts), a twelve-hundred-page novel which describes with photographic precision the lives of a group of students in Amsterdam between 1946 and 1953.