Synopses & Reviews
“While fully aware that such an honorable title can only be used in great exceptions in Flemish literature, I would call Wonder a masterpiece.”—Paul de Wispelaere, Vlaamse Gids
In his Faulknerian novels, Hugo Claus mixes expertly crafted stories of postwar Flanders with poignant psychological portraits rich in mythological and literary allusion. In Wonder, a landmark of Flemish literature, Claus mixes the souls of a handful of displaced and desperate individuals with the backdrop of Flanders and visions of the Polish and Russian fronts of WWII. The dense emotional texture of the characters entangled in complex moral labyrinths combined with a deep feeling for Flemish history make the novel a symphony that only Hugo Claus could have composed.
Hugo Claus (1929-2008), author of dozens of plays, novels, and collections of poetry, is arguably the most important Belgian writer of the twentieth century. His most celebrated novel is The Sorrow of Belgium (1983).
Michael Henry Heim is the winner of the 2005 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, the ALTA Translation Prize, and the AATSEEL Award. He has translated the work of Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, and Péter Esterházy.
Review
"Fine and ambitious. . . . A work of savage satire intensely engaged with the moral and cultural life of the authors Belgium. . . . Packed with asides, allusions, and fierce juxtapositions, a style created to evoke a world sliding into chaos where contrast and contradictions are so grotesque that we can only wonder. . . . [Wonder is] a reminder of the energy and experimental verve with which so many writers of the Fifties and Sixties (Malaparte, Bernhard, Grass, Böll, Burgess, Pynchon) conjured up [a] disjointed and rapidly complicating world."
Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books
"To speak today of a still largely-unknown major work on European Fascism . . . seems presumptuous, rather like announcing the existence of, if not a new continent, at least a land mass of strange and significant proportions. But in discussing Wonder, it would be churlish not to admit to an explorers exhilaration at discovery."
Sam Munson, The National
"We cannot accept the world as it is. Each day we should wake up foaming at the mouth from the injustice of things."
Hugo Claus
"The greatest writer of my generation."
Remco Campert
"Claus's work is just as broad as the soul is deep."
Gerrit Komrij
"While fully aware that such an honorable title can only be used in great exceptions in Flemish literature, I would call Wonder a masterpiece."
Paul de Wispelaere, Vlaamse Gids
"Claus rages against the decay of the physical self while desire remains untamed. From the beginning, his poetry has been marked by an uncommon mix of intelligence and passion, given expression in a medium over which he has such light-fingered control that art becomes invisible."
J.M. Coetzee
Synopsis
A gripping tale of desire, temptation, searching, revelation, and the impossibility of escaping the past.
Synopsis
While exposing the remains of Flemish fascism twenty years after the War, Wonder tracks one man's descent into madness. Victor, a bewildered teacher, pursues a mysterious woman to a castle in a remote village. There he finds himself trapped among a handful of desperate individuals still living out their collaboration with the Nazis. As Victor¢s sanity begins to crumble, he poses as an expert on their messianic leader, who disappeared at the Russian front but whose return they believe imminent. The rich cadences of the prose and dense emotional texture of characters lost in complex moral labyrinths make Wonder a symphony only Claus could have composed.
Synopsis
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About the Author
The prose, poetry, and paintings of Hugo Claus (1929-2008) were as influential as they were groundbreaking. His novels include The Sorrow of Belgium, his magnum opus of postwar Europe, as well as Desire, The Swordfish, Mild Destruction, Rumors, and The Duck Hunt. His corpus of poetry is immense and stunningly diverse. Claus's painting led him to become involved in the avant-garde Cobra movement. Impossible to pin down. Claus was eclectic and in constant motion; his work is kaleidoscopic. In addition to receiving every major Dutch-language literary prize, Claus received the 2002 Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding for his body of work.
Michael Henry Heim has translated dozens of novels, plays, and essays from a number of languages. His translations include The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, My Century by Günter Grass, Helping Verbs of the Heart by Péter Esterházy, and Thomas Mann¢s Death in Venice. He is the recipient of the American Literary Translators Association Prize, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize, and the PEN American Center Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.