The Assault - Mulisch, Harry Review & Synopsis

Synopsis 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. Review probes moral devastation in the wake of the slaughter of an innocent family by the Nazis in retaliation for the association with a Dutch collaborator.Born in 1927 to a Jewish mother whose family died in the concentration camps and an Austrian father who was jailed after the war for collaborating with the Nazis, HARRY MULISCH is one of Holland's most acclaimed writers. He is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, nonfiction, commentary, plays, and poetry, many of them having as their subject the Second World War. The Assault has been translated into more than two dozen languages and was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1986. Mulisch died in 2010. The Assault 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. 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." Last Call "This is the highest kind of achievement of which fiction is capable. . . . Ranks with the finest European fiction of recent years."—The Christian Science Monitor Uli Bouwmeester is a retired variety artiste who spends his days whiling away his time. Out of the blue, an invitation arrives to play the leading part in a new drama at the Actor's Theater in Amsterdam, and he is flung with a vengeance from the monotony of life in the suburbs into the reality of the 1980s. All goes well until a television crew arrives to interview Uli, revealing a secret from his past that threatens not only the success of the theater's enterprise but also Uli's life. "In his corner of Europe, Dutch novelist Harry Mulisch is creating some of the more haunting, provocative fiction to emerge from the continent in the past decade."—New York Newsday "This is the highest kind of achievement of which fiction is capable." The Procedure Internationally renowned novelist Harry Mulisch's The Procedure is a haunting and fascinating novel about two men who try to create life but fail. In the late sixteenth century, Rabbi Jehudah Löw, in order to guarantee the safety of the Jews in Prague, creates a golem by following a procedure outlined in a third-century cabalist text. Four hundred years later, Victor Werker, a Dutch biologist mourning the loss of his stillborn daughter, causes an international uproar when he creates a complex organic clay crystal that can reproduce and has a metabolism. But his unsettling discovery takes its toll as his inner and outer demons pursue him around the world, from California to Venice, Cairo, and Jerusalem. Internationally renowned novelist Harry Mulisch's The Procedure is a haunting and fascinating novel about two men who try to create life but fail." The Discovery of Heaven The Discovery of Heaven, Harry Mulisch's magnum opus, is a rich mosaic of twentieth-century trauma in which many themes—friendship, loyalty, family, art, technology, religion, fate, good, and evil—suffuse a suspenseful and resplendent narrative. The story begins with the meeting of Onno and Max, two complicated individuals whom fate has mysteriously and magically brought together. They share responsibility for the birth of a remarkable and radiant boy who embarks on a mandated quest that takes the reader all over Europe and to the land where all such quests begin and end. Abounding in philosophical, psychological and theological inquiries, yet laced with humor that is as infectious as it is willful, The Discovery of Heaven lingers in the mind long after it has been read. It not only tells an accessible story, but also convinces one that it just might be possible to bring order into the chaos of the world through a story. The story begins with the meeting of Onno and Max, two complicated individuals whom fate has mysteriously and magically brought together." A Family Occupation A Family Occupation investigates Dutch-language texts by well-known authors which address the occupation and its aftermath in the lives of victims, collaborators, bystanders and Dutch internees in the prison-camps of Indonesia. It is the first English-language introduction to writings by and about the "Children of War" and their cultural context. Their themes and literary conventions throw an interesting light on the Dutch approach to issues such as guilt and innocence, memory and narrative, national identity, victimhood, child abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, amnesia and recovered memory. I quote in English from: Harry Mulisch , The Assault . Claire Nicholas White, transl. New York: Pantheon, 1985. The Dutch edition is Harry Mulisch , De aanslag. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1987. Mulisch is one of the most prominent Dutch ..." Siegfried From the bestselling author of "The Discovery of Heaven" comes a compelling new novel with the daring premise that Hitler and Eva Braun produced a son. From the bestselling author of "The Discovery of Heaven" comes a compelling new novel with the daring premise that Hitler and Eva Braun produced a son." The procedure Internationally renowned novelist Harry Mulisch's "The Procedure" is a haunting and fascinating novel about two men who try to create life but fail. In the late sixteenth century, Rabbi Jehudah Low, in order to guarantee the safety of the Jews in Prague, creates a golem by following a procedure outlined in a third-century cabalist text. Four hundred years later, Victor Werker, a Dutch biologist mourning the loss of his stillborn daughter, causes an international uproar when he creates a complex organic clay crystal that can reproduce and has a metabolism. But his unsettling discovery takes its toll as his inner and outer demons pursue him around the world, from California to Venice, Cairo, and Jerusalem. Internationally renowned novelist Harry Mulisch's "The Procedure" is a haunting and fascinating novel about two men who try to create life but fail." Holocaust Literature: Lerner to Zychlinsky, index Review: "This encyclopedia offers an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the important writers and works that form the literature about the Holocaust and its consequences. The collection is alphabetically arranged and consists of high-quality biocritical essays on 309 writers who are first-, second-, and third-generation survivors or important thinkers and spokespersons on the Holocaust. An essential literary reference work, this publication is an important addition to the genre and a solid value for public and academic libraries."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004 Dr . Seuss Goes to War : The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel , with Richard H . Minear . 2000 . Little Lit : Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies , with Françoise Mouly , 2000 . Jack Cole and Plastic Man : Forms ..." Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann The trial of Adolf Eichmann began in 1961 under a deceptively simple label, "criminal case 40/61." Hannah Arendt covered the trial for the New Yorker magazine and recorded her observations in Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil. Harry Mulisch was also assigned to cover the trial for a Dutch news weekly. Arendt would later say in her book's preface that Mulisch was one of the few people who shared her views on the character of Eichmann. At the time, Mulisch was a young and little-known writer; in the years since he has since emerged as an author of major international importance, celebrated for such novels as The Assault and The Discovery of Heaven. Mulisch modestly called his book on case 40/61 a report, and it is certainly that, as he gives firsthand accounts of the trial and its key players and scenes (the defendant's face strangely asymmetric and riddled by tics, his speech absurdly baroque). Eichmann's character comes out in his incessant bureaucratizing and calculating, as well as in his grandiose visions of himself as a Pontius Pilate-like innocent. As Mulisch intersperses his dispatches from Jerusalem with meditative accounts of a divided and ruined Berlin, an eerily rebuilt Warsaw, and a visit to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann becomes as a disturbing and highly personal essay on the Nazi extermination of European Jews and on the human capacity to commit evil ever more efficiently in an age of technological advancement. Here presented with a foreword by Debórah Dwork and translated for the first time into English, Criminal Case 40/61 provides the reader with an unsettling portrait not only of Eichmann's character but also of technological precision and expertise. It is a landmark of Holocaust writing. Harry Mulisch was also assigned to cover the trial for a Dutch news weekly. Arendt would later say in her book's preface that Mulisch was one of the few people who shared her views on the character of Eichmann." Literature and Theology This book explores current trends in the interdisciplinary study of literature and theology - an area of academic activity that has developed dramatically in the past twenty years. The field of study originated from the impetus to embrace the richness of imaginative resources in theological reflection and was stimulated by the re-emergence of the sacred in contemporary theory. Since the mid '90s critical theory has undergone a number of significant transformations, theology has become a subject of public concern and the boundaries between sacred and cultural texts have become increasingly unstable. This book brings together the work of leading scholars in the field with that of emerging voices. Offering an important resource for the growing number of postgraduate courses exploring the relation between religion and culture in the contemporary context, this book delineates current trends in interdisciplinary debate as well as tracing emerging configurations. Mulisch , Harry . The Assault . Translated by Claire Nicolas White. New York: Random House, 1985. Mulisch , Harry . The Discovery of Heaven. Translate by Paul Vincent. New York: Penguin, 1996. Mulisch , Harry . Siegfried." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century Now available in paperback for the first time, Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century is both a comprehensive reference resource and a springboard for further study. This volume: examines canonical Jewish writers, less well-known authors of Yiddish and Hebrew, and emerging Israeli writers includes entries on figures as diverse as Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Tristan Tzara, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, and Woody Allen contains introductory essays on Jewish-American writing, Holocaust literature and memoirs, Yiddish writing, and Anglo-Jewish literature provides a chronology of twentieth-century Jewish writers. Compiled by expert contributors, this book contains over 330 entries on individual authors, each consisting of a biography, a list of selected publications, a scholarly essay on their work and suggestions for further reading. ... Belgium: Stichting Ons Erfdeel, 1994 Raskin, Jonah, article in International Herald Tribune (14 May 1987) Sazaki, Kristina R., “An Interview with Harry Mulisch ”, New German Review, 2(1986) Spender, Stephen, review of The Assault , ..." Odd Jobs To complement his work as a fiction writer, John Updike accepted any number of odd jobs—book reviews and introductions, speeches and tributes, a “few paragraphs” on baseball or beauty or Borges—and saw each as “an opportunity to learn something, or to extract from within some unsuspected wisdom.” In this, his largest collection of assorted prose, he brings generosity and insight to the works and lives of William Dean Howells, George Bernard Shaw, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, and dozens more. Novels from outposts of postmodernism like Turkey, Albania, Israel, and Nigeria are reviewed, as are biographies of Cleopatra and Dorothy Parker. The more than a hundred considerations of books are flanked, on one side, by short stories, a playlet, and personal essays, and, on the other, by essays on his own oeuvre. Updike’s odd jobs would be any other writer’s chief work. THE AssAuLT , by Harry Mulisch , translated from the Dutch by Claire Nicolas \\Vhite. 185 pp. Pantheon, 1985. THE SEA-CRossED FISHERMAN, by Yashar Kemal, translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kelual. 288 pp. Braziller, I985." World Historical Fiction "Based on World historical guide by Daniel D. McGarry and Sarah Harriman White published 1973 by Scarecrow Press. This title annotates 'more than 6000 works ... Primary arrangement is by areas of the world, and then by time periods within each area.'" Booklist. ... George MacDonald ) , 5471 Flashman and the Redskins ( Fraser , George MacDonald ) , 3316 Flashman at the Charge ( Fraser , George MacDonald ) , 3317 Flashman in the Great Game ( Fraser , George MacDonald ) , 3318 Flashman's Lady ..." Intercourse Intercourse is a book that moves through the sexed world of dominance and submission. It moves in descending circles, not in a straight line, and as in a vortex each spiral goes down deeper. Its formal model is Dante's Inferno; its lyrical debt is to Rimbaud; the equality it envisions is rooted in the dreams of women, silent generations, pioneer voices, lone rebels, and masses who agitated, demanded, cried out, broke laws, and even begged. The begging was a substitute for retaliatory violence: doing bodily harm back to those who use or injure you. I want women to be done with begging. The public censure of women as if we are rabid because we speak without apology about the world in which we live is a strategy of threat that usually works. Men often react to women's words - speaking and writing - as if they were acts of violence; sometimes men react to women's words with violence. So we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back. Most women have experienced enough dominance from men - control, violence, insult, contempt - that no threat seems empty. Intercourse does not say, forgive me and love me. It does not say, I forgive you, I love you. For a woman writer to thrive (or, arguably, to survive) in these current hard times, forgiveness and love must be subtext. No. I say no. Intercourse is search and assertion, passion and fury; and its form - no less than its content - deserves critical scrutiny and respect.---- PREFACE. Mulisch , Harry . The Assault . Translated by Claire Nicolas White. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Murdoch, Iris. An Accidental Man. Reading, England: Triad/Granada, 1981. _____. The Bell. Aylesbury, England: Triad/Granada, 1981. _____." French Writers and the Politics of Complicity Focusing on the political commitments of three French writers who collaborated with the Vichy Regime and Nazi Germany during World War II, and on those of three leading French intellectuals of the 1990s whose misplaced political idealism led them to support xenophobic, authoritarian regimes and dangerous historical revisionisms, Richard J. Golsan reexamines the notion of political commitment or engagement in two difficult periods in modern French history. Discussing the fiction, essays, and journalism of Henry de Montherlant, Jean Giono, and Alphonse de Châteaubriant, Golsan explores the complexity of artistic and intellectual collaboration during the German Occupation. He demonstrates that, in this context, complicity with political evil often derived from "nonpolitical" motives including sexual orientation, antimodern aesthetics, and dangerously skewed religious beliefs. Turning to the post–cold war era of the 1990s, Golsan examines the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut's support for Croatian independence, the "mediologist" Régis Debray's pro-Serb stance during the bombing of Kosovo, and the historian Stéphane Courtois's revisionist comparison of Nazi and Communist crimes during the 1997 debate surrounding the publication of The Black Book of Communism. In these three cases, laudable motives—and misguided historical comparisons with Vichy, Nazism, and the Occupation period that marked the political and intellectual discourses of France in the 1990s—resulted, paradoxically, in antidemocratic engagements profoundly at odds with the original motivations behind these intellectuals' commitments. In each of these case studies, political complicity derives from a combination of passions and ideals—whether positive or negative, emotional or intellectual—as well as a desire to make the present conform to a particular and generally skewed vision of the past. The full implications of these involvements are neither fully grasped nor understood by their authors, either through lack of objectivity, rationality, or imagination or through willful ignorance. The results are always unfortunate and often disastrous. Considered together, these six intellectuals serve as sobering reminders that political commitments are never as simple or straightforward as they seem and that admirable motives for political involvement can have dangerous and destructive consequences in historical practice. Mulisch , Harry . The Assault . Trans . Claire Nicolas White . New York : Pantheon , 1985 . Muray , Philippe . Chers djihadistes ... Paris : Mille et Une Nuits , 2001 . Nietzsche , Friedrich . Beyond Good and Evil . Trans ." Beginning with the Word (Cultural Exegesis) In this addition to the critically acclaimed Cultural Exegesis series, a nationally recognized scholar and award-winning author offers a sophisticated theological engagement with the nature of language and literature. Roger Lundin conducts a sustained theological dialogue with imaginative literature and with modern literary and cultural theory, utilizing works of poetry and fiction throughout to prompt the discussion and focus his reflections. The book is marked by a commitment to bring the history of Christian thought, modern theology in particular, into dialogue with literature and modern culture. It is theologically rigorous, widely interdisciplinary in scope, lucidly written, and ecumenical in tone and approach. New York: Ecco, 2001. “An Appeal”; “EitherOr.” ———. The Witness of Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Mulisch , Harry . The Assault . Translated by Claire Nicolas White. New York: Pantheon, 1985. O'Connor, Flannery." New York Noise An up-close view of the 1990s music scene that brought us neo-klezmer bands, Tzadik Records, and a new vision of Jewish identity. Coined in 1992 by composer/saxophonist John Zorn, “Radical Jewish Culture,” or RJC, became the banner under which many artists in Zorn’s circle performed, produced, and circulated their music. New York’s downtown music scene, part of the once-grungy Lower East Side, has long been the site of cultural innovation, and it is within this environment that Zorn and his circle sought to combine, as a form of social and cultural critique, the unconventional, uncategorizable nature of downtown music with sounds that were recognizably Jewish. Out of this movement arose bands, like Hasidic New Wave and Hanukkah Bush, whose eclectic styles encompassed neo-klezmer, hardcore and acid rock, neo-Yiddish cabaret, free verse, free jazz, and electronica. Though relatively fleeting in rock history, the “RJC moment” produced a six-year burst of conversations, writing, and music—including festivals, international concerts, and nearly two hundred new recordings. During a decade of research, Tamar Barzel became a frequent visitor at clubs, post-club hangouts, musicians’ dining rooms, coffee shops, and archives. Her book describes the way RJC forged a new vision of Jewish identity in the contemporary world, one that sought to restore the bond between past and present, to interrogate the limits of racial and gender categories, and to display the tensions between secularism and observance, traditional values and contemporary concerns. Includes links to audiovisual content Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Mulisch , Harry . The Assault . New York: Random House, 2011 [1982]. Needleman, Jacob, and George Baker, eds. Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teaching." Knowing Otherwise Prejudice is often not a conscious attitude: because of ingrained habits in relating to the world, one may act in prejudiced ways toward others without explicitly understanding the meaning of one’s actions. Similarly, one may know how to do certain things, like ride a bicycle, without being able to articulate in words what that knowledge is. These are examples of what Alexis Shotwell discusses in Knowing Otherwise as phenomena of “implicit understanding.” Presenting a systematic analysis of this concept, she highlights how this kind of understanding may be used to ground positive political and social change, such as combating racism in its less overt and more deep-rooted forms. Shotwell begins by distinguishing four basic types of implicit understanding: nonpropositional, skill-based, or practical knowledge; embodied knowledge; potentially propositional knowledge; and affective knowledge. She then develops the notion of a racialized and gendered “common sense,” drawing on Gramsci and critical race theorists, and clarifies the idea of embodied knowledge by showing how it operates in the realm of aesthetics. She also examines the role that both negative affects, like shame, and positive affects, like sympathy, can play in moving us away from racism and toward political solidarity and social justice. Finally, Shotwell looks at the politicized experience of one’s body in feminist and transgender theories of liberation in order to elucidate the role of situated sensuous knowledge in bringing about social change and political transformation. Mulisch , Harry . 1985. The assault . Trans. C. N. White. New York: Pantheon Books. Namaste, Viviane K. 2000. Invisible lives: The erasure of transsexual and transgendered people. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2005." War Stories Specially commissioned by Michael Morpurgo to mark the 60th anniversary of VE day, this deeply moving collection features stories of war from the most well-loved voices in children's literature, including Michelle Magorian, Celia Rees, George Layton, Robert Westall, Joan Aiken, Eva Ibbotson, Geraldine McCaughrean and other top children's authors. From World War II to the Crusades, 1970s Beirut to the modern-day Middle East, these vivid stories explore wars throughout history. They examine not only the immediate consequences of war, but also what happens after the fighting is over. Waiting for Peace: War Stories was originally published as War: Stories of Conflict. ago, I picked up a book in an oriental bookshop called Twenty Jataka Tales , retold by Noor Inayat Khan . The stories were of the lives of the Buddha in his different animal reincarnations – nearly all about sacrifice." Words and Witness Connects Holocaust literature and film to other works of "historical horror" in order to examine the limits that trauma imposes upon literary and artistic expression. Mulisch , Harry . The Assault . Trans. Claire Nicholas White. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Neher, Andre. The Exile of the Word: From the Silence of the Bible to the Silence of Auschwitz. Trans. David Maisel." The Diseased Brain and the Failing Mind This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by The Wellcome Trust. The Diseased Brain and the Failing Mind charts changing cultural understandings of dementia and alzheimer's disease in scientific and cultural texts across the 20th Century. Reading a range of texts from the US, UK, Europe and Japan, the book examines how the language of dementia – regarding the loss of identity, loss of agency, loss of self and life – is rooted in scientific discourse and expressed in popular and literary texts. Following changing scientific understandings of dementia, the book also demonstrates how cultural expressions of the experience and dementia have fed back into the way medical institutions have treated dementia patients. The book includes a glossary of scientific terms for non-specialist readers. English Literature in Transition, 1880–192054 (2011): 56–78. Mulisch , Harry . The Assault . Translated by Claire N. White. New York: Pantheon, 1985. First published in Dutch in 1982. Müller, Ch. Foreword to Senile Dementia: Clinical and ..." Twentieth-Century Europe Twentieth-Century Europe: A Brief History presents readers with a concise and accessible survey of the most significant themes and political events that shaped European history in the 20th and 21st centuries. Features updates that include a new chapter that reviews major political and economic trends since 1989 and an extensively revised chapter that emphasizes the intellectual and cultural history of Europe since World War II Organized into brief chapters that are suitable for traditional courses or for classes in non-traditional courses that allow for additional material selected by the professor Includes the addition of a variety of supplemental materials such as chronological timelines, maps, and illustrations Mulisch , Harry . 1985. The Assault . New York: Pantheon Books. A powerful novel about moral dilemmas in the Resistance in the Netherlands. Paxton, Robert O. 2001. Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944." The Political Responsibilities of Everyday Bystanders In a world where every person is exposed daily through the mass media to images of violence and suffering, as most dramatically exemplified in recent years by the ongoing tragedy in Darfur, the question naturally arises: What responsibilities do we, as bystanders to such social injustice, bear in holding accountable those who have created the conditions for this suffering? And what is our own complicity in the continuance of such violence&—indeed, how do we contribute to and benefit from it? How is our responsibility as individuals connected to our collective responsibility as members of a society? Such questions underlie Stephen Esquith&’s investigation in this book. For Esquith, being responsible means holding ourselves accountable as a people for the institutions we have built or tolerated and the choices we have made individually and collectively within these institutional constraints. It is thus more than just acknowledgment; it involves settling accounts as well as recognizing our own complicity even as bystanders. Mulisch , Harry . The Assault . Translated by Claire Nicholas White. New York: Pantheon, 1985. . Criminal Case, 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann: An Eyewitness Account. Translated by Robert Naborn, foreword by Deborah Dwork."