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De Aanslag by Harry Mulisch
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De Aanslag

by Harry Mulisch

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2,198377,151 (3.82)169
It is the winter of 1945, the last dark days of World War II in occupied Holland. A Nazi collaborator, infamous for his cruelty, is assassinated as he rides home on his bicycle. The Germans retaliate by burning down the home of an innocent family; only twelve-year-old Anton survives. Based on actual events, The Assault traces the complex repercussions of this horrific incident on Anton's life. Determined to forget, he opts for a carefully normal existence: a prudent marriage, a successful career, and colorless passivity. But the past keeps breaking through, in relentless memories and in chance encounters with others who were involved in the assassination and its aftermath, until Anton finally learns what really happened that night in 1945--and why.… (more)
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Title:De Aanslag
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The Assault by Harry Mulisch

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English (23)  Dutch (10)  German (2)  Portuguese (1)  All languages (36)
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Five episodes from Anton Steenwijk's life are described in this novel, five stations of his life: from 1945, 1952, 1956, 1966, and 1981. It is the first that is the most significant, describing the assault of the novel's title.
Twelve year old Anton lives with his parents and his brother in Haarlem, near Amsterdam. The war is almost at an end, but occupied Holland still suffers great hardship -- there is hardly enough food to eat, the schools are closed in the winter because they can not be heated. One January evening, "in the silence that was Holland then, six shots suddenly rang out." Fake Ploeg, "Chief Inspector of Police, the greatest murderer and traitor in Haarlem" has been shot as he rode his bicycle by. The Steenwijk's neighbors rush out and drag the body, which had fallen in front of their house, in front of the Steenwijk's house. Everyone knows the Germans will retaliate. Peter, Anton's brother runs out to move the body elsewhere, but it is too late. The Germans arrive, Peter flees, the Steenwijks are rounded up, their house immediately burned to the ground. Anton is taken away from the scene.
Anton is not treated harshly, the police do not know what to do with him. He winds up in Amsterdam, where an uncle is called to pick him up the next day.
Anton's parents and his brother were killed, though this is only discovered after the war is finally over. Anton is raised by his aunt and uncle. The assault is part of indelible past, but he can not directly confront it. In the second episode, in 1952, he finally ventures back to Haarlm to the scene of the crime. In 1956, during anticommunist demonstrations he runs into Fake Ploeg Jr., the son of the murdered collaborator and a former classmate of Anton's. Ploeg's life was also turned upside down by the events of that evening; he never finished school and now works as repair man. In their conversation Ploeg argues that his father was as innocent as Steenwijk's parents, that his own loss was as great as Anton's, suggesting a different measure of guilt and innocence.
Anton becomes an anaesthesiologist, and he marries. At a funeral in 1966 he meets a man who was involved in the assault on Ploeg, and again questions of guilt and innocence are raised. The assassin, a member of the Dutch Resistance, acknowledges that they knew the Germans would retaliate, that innocents would die as a result of the attack, but he argues that he could only be held responsible for those deaths he actually caused.
Finally, in 1981, Anton runs into one of the neighbors who had moved Ploeg's body in front of the Steenwijk house that night, learning for the first time why they had done this -- and why they had chosen this (and not another) neighboring house.
Told against the backdrop of shifting Dutch post-war society, centered around significant points in that history -- the reaction to the events in Budapest in 1956, the release of Willy Lages (head of the Gestapo in Holland), anti-nuclear protests in 1981 -- Mulisch paints a canvas of the difficulties of Dutch society in coming to terms with the events of the war. There are no easy answers for Mulisch, no simple blame to assign, even where it first appears there might be. The hand of fate lurks strongly here, but Mulisch has a subtle touch with it.
Very well written, The Assault is a morality play for our complex times, a far cry from most simplistic war literature. The difficulty in determining and judging right and wrong is superbly described here.
An important, and very good, book. Highly recommended.
1 vote Challr | May 21, 2023 |
3.5 Stars ( )
  Zentasy72 | Mar 21, 2020 |
Na vijfentwintig jaar verschijnt ter gelegenheid van de 80ste verjaardag van Harry Mulisch deze eenmalige gebonden jubileumeditie. Het is de vijftigste druk van De Aanslag. De Aanslag kreeg bij verschijning in september 1982 een juichende ontvangst in de pers, was een groot verkoopsucces en vond snel zijn weg naar een groot lezerspubliek in binnen- en buitenland: wereldwijd zijn tot dusverre maar liefst één miljoen exemplaren verkocht. Ook werd de roman door Fons Rademakers verfilmd en met een Oscar bekroond. ( )
  Langshan | Dec 6, 2019 |
I don't have much to say here. I enjoyed this. If one were to read it without any sense of emotion or history, it is a detective story, of a murdered collaborator and the family whose doorstep he winds up at. But it is so much more than that. As one of the blurbs on the back of the book nicely puts it, it is "a dark fable about design and accident, strength and weakness, and the ways in which guilt and innocence can overlap and intermingle." Easily recommended. And, since I really don't have anything more to elaborate on, I will just drop some lines I enjoyed.

"Everything was made of dirty, rattling steel, which somehow told him more about the war than he had ever understood before."

"Boundaries have to be continuously sealed off, but it's a hopeless job, for everything touches everything else in this world. A beginning never disappears, not even with the ending."

"Besides, whoever keeps the future in front of him and the past at his back is doing something else that is hard to imagine. For the image implies that events somehow already exist in the future, reach the present at a determined moment, and finally come to rest in the past. But nothing exists in the future; it is empty; one might die at any minute. Therefore such a person has his face turned towards the void, whereas it is the past behind him that is visible, stored in the memory." ( )
1 vote .Monkey. | Jan 11, 2018 |
This is a very exciting and interesting story. Anton, as a boy, experiences an assassination at his doorstep, which changes and shapes his whole life. It is in the winter of 1945, shortly before the end of the war, when Anton, with this incident, becomes an orphan. He tells his story in different episodes of his life, while he is constantly confronted with this incident, either because he meets people from then or he gradually understands what really happened.
Muslisch has done a masterpiece with this fiction. His writing style is great. He can let the reader dive into the story from the very first moment. All protagonists have something special. I never had the feeling for someone to take special party.
This is a book that I highly recommend. ( )
  Ameise1 | Jun 4, 2017 |
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» Add other authors (13 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Mulisch, Harryprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Habers, AnnelenTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hulsing, MilanCartoonistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vries, Edwin deNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Overal was het al dag, maar hier was het nacht, neen, meer dan nacht. - C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus, Epistulae, VI, 16
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Ver, ver weg in de tweede wereldoorlog woonde een zekere Anton Steenwijk met zijn ouders en zijn broer aan de rand van Haarlem
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It is the winter of 1945, the last dark days of World War II in occupied Holland. A Nazi collaborator, infamous for his cruelty, is assassinated as he rides home on his bicycle. The Germans retaliate by burning down the home of an innocent family; only twelve-year-old Anton survives. Based on actual events, The Assault traces the complex repercussions of this horrific incident on Anton's life. Determined to forget, he opts for a carefully normal existence: a prudent marriage, a successful career, and colorless passivity. But the past keeps breaking through, in relentless memories and in chance encounters with others who were involved in the assassination and its aftermath, until Anton finally learns what really happened that night in 1945--and why.

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