2010/37

Hugo Claus: Het Jaar van de Kreeft (329p.)

My Claus strategy exists in reading most of his novels at the periphery, in one day proceeding with reading his masterpiece Het Verdriet van België (The Sorrow of Belgium), and in finally emerging (by doing so) as a full-blown Claus connoisseur (just kidding).

Het Jaar van de Kreeft has not been translated in English, and is more or less the story of his love/hate relationship with Dutch actress Kitty Courbois in Amsterdam in the early 70s.

Again, I’m struck by the quality of effortlessness omnipresent in Claus’s prose. Claus didn’t have to work hard to be a great writer. Simple and yet deep.

The great Belgian.