Product Description
When John Balthasar returns to Pamplona in 1983, he is still haunted by memories of his previous visit ten years earlier. While researching a magazine article he had become involved in an attempt to smuggle a Basque nationalist into France, but at the last minute his nerve had failed him. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A fairy Tale For Grown Ups.
A man's career is ruined, his marriage has failed, and he reaches his midlife crisis. So he runs away from his life in New York City.

He rents a cottage somewhere in the Canadian forests. His new landlord forgets to give him supplies. So he's forced to leave once again in search for food in the inhabited world.

He loses his way and he meets a woman. It's a strong woman who's able to take care for herself.After a hobo existence with this woman and many adventures he winds up in his cottage again. Due to his wandering about, he loses gradually the connection with the reality of the human world. When he leaves his cottage for the second time, he begins his quest to the North, the Quest for the Snow-Goddess.

This is the story of a man who loses his touch with reality not because he's weak but because he wants a physical and a spiritual connection with Nature. ... Read more

Product Description
Michael Beauchamp, an American soldier caught in German-occupied France, flees across Southern Europe towards Gibraltar. He unknowingly follows his grandfather Michel Beauchamp's footsteps, tracing his journey as the two men, separated by seventy years, elude armed pursuers across the wasteland of a continent ravaged by war. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Just a great novel
Koning writes so cleanly, without extraneous words, that it is hard to put his books down. The story just moves right along without digressions. And his style of writing short chapters makes his books even cleaner to read. Just a great novel.

Good on every level.
Both the threads in this novel, one set after the Paris Commune, and the other in the Second World War, are interesting. The author has done a wonderful thing : wrapping complexity in a narrative that carries you through with pleasure. The exploration of coincidence, concurrence is interesting, and reminds us how often we pattern our lives with attention to this aspect. Be sure I noted that the most important female character shared a name with my aunt. These little things stand out in our lives.

Strong voice, absorbing characters
I picked up Zeeland when I was still reading McCullough's John Adams bio, thinking I would skim through, get a feel for it, and set it aside.I couldn't put it down.The strong narrative voice drew me in within a few pages and the characters kept me involved.Zeeland is easily the most readable novel I've picked up this year, and this had been a competitive year!I plan to recommend it to my men's book club. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Horrid history
I encountered this book about the same time I encountered Pick's "The Last Valley".
Both had to do with the backwaters of long, involved wars, The Hundred Years War which inspired "A Walk with Love and Death" and the Thirty Years War which inspired "The Last Valley".
We may be familiar with some of the battles, Poitiers, for example, in the Hundred Years War, or an important figure such as Tilly or Gustavus Adolphus.
Ultimately the face of Europe changed, if we consider dynasties, maps, and so forth.
What is less known is what happens when a society whose technology does not allow for much resilience is repeatedly and horribly ruined by battles, armies marching and countermarching, unemployed mercenaries trying to make a living, plagues exacerbated by famine and exposure (homes and cities burned), bandits and brigands.
Into this perfect horror of anarchy come two young lovers.Thrown on to the road, so to speak, they attempt to survive the bandits, mercenary bands, starvation, fanatical cultists, and to find someplace of refuge.
It is possible that the author added more travails than would have normally occurred.Clearly, if one is murdered early in the book, no time is left to nearly starve, to be chased by bandits, to encounter a self-mutilating medieval version of Heaven's Gate, and be threatened by local warlords.
Both this book and "The Last Valley" were made into movies.
I encountered the movie--starring Angelica Huston and Assaf Dayan--when I was at Ft. Jackson in 1970
Ordinarily, the best lines in movies in post theaters are supplied by the audience, and are uniformly hilarious.Movies are far more entertaining seen this way.
This movie played to absolute silence.
When I got out of the movie, and the rest of the usually irrepressible and vigorous Infantrymen were walking out silently, I stopped to look at the sunset, taking deep breaths.
The street past the theater was a long, shallow grade.As I watched, a big tactical deuce and a half came up the street, snarling in low gear, carrying the guard reliefs.
"Thank God," I thought, "somebody's in charge."

When nobody's in charge, the peasants eventually cease planting, defying culture, history, and possibly even their genes.The saga of the archers at Poitiers, or the Swiss mercenaries trailing their pikes back and forth across Europe cover the absolute horror the wars caused.This is a book to remind us of what we don't see, in Europe or the Americas at this point.Although certain areas of Africa may well look similar.

The book is a riveting read, although depressing.I wouldn't read it before a family function, nor before bed.

The one book I read and re-read
There are very few books I've read more than once. Life is short, and the TBR pile tall. The one book I keep going back to every ten years or so is A Walk with Love and Death, by Hans Koning, a spare, elegant love story set in 1538 in France. The author was Hans Koningsberger when I first read him--it must have been the spring of 1963.

In later years, I found it difficult to find copies of the novel. This was before the Net, and finding a copy of a particular out-of-print book meant stopping in at various used bookstores and searching the shelves, one bookstore at a time. I ordered it though my small-town library, and a copy was sent to me from afar. I read it, loved it yet again, and could not bear to be parted from it. I was beginning to write myself, and Koning's spare style was something of a beacon for me.

And then, with the Net, and the all-powerful and astonishing ability to seek out any title, any author, I discovered that the book I loved was by Hans Koning, that he was a professor at a university in the U.S., and that not only was he alive and well, but had published quite a number of books. I might have written him then...but my life was busy, and so I did not.

A few weeks ago, having sent of the "final" changes to my soon-to-be-published novel, I took A Walk with Love and Death down off my shelf. It had been 44 years since I had first read it. Perhaps the author had a website, I thought. In no time, I found it, and through the contacts page, I was finally able to send him a letter, telling him how much I love this novel, and how much it has taught me about writing.

The email was bounced back. Hans Koning died this spring, only months before. It brings tears to my eyes even now. I had missed my chance.

I have just finished yet another reading of A Walk with Love and Death. I still love this book. Such beautiful sentences! I'm going to quote from the opening lines, which I think set the tone beautifully for the bitter-sweetness of the story, and the elegance of the prose:

"In the spring of that year, 1358, the peasants of northern France did not sow their fields any more.

"I had succeeded in getting out of Paris just before sunset and walked to Saint-Denis in the twilight; I had found a room there to sleep and now was on the road again.

"The sun was rising almost opposite me; a harsh light skimmed the empty fields. The war was in its twentieth year, but I was happy.


The ending: ah, I resist the obvious.

Review for A Walk With Love and Death
It's an easy read, a simple tale of love in the Middle Ages. A poor man falls for an aristocrat woman and they must escape her demolished home. ... Read more

Product Description
Word count: 2489. ... Read more

Product Description
This wonderful book addresses Vermeer's life, artistic contributions and historical significance of his time and work. There are numerous color and black and white pictures.Contents:? Art for a time of reason? The golden age? Man of Delft? The pioneers? A flowering of brilliance? Discovering the "Sphinx of Delft"? A quiet, compelling art? A legacy of mystery? Chronology of artists? Bibliography & map ... Read more

Product Description
A little book of aphorisms. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Poncke Princen, Corrie Ten Boom, Peter Hurkos, Henk Sneevliet, Hans Koning, Geertruida Middendorp, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Jack Van Der Geest, Jan Van Hoof, Mies Boissevain-Van Lennep, Gerrit Jan Van Heuven Goedhart, Titus Brandsma, Hannie Schaft, Parzival Copes, Anton de Kom, Jan Gies, Willem Arondeus, Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, Wim Schermerhorn, Frieda Belinfante, Bert Bakker, Allard Oosterhuis, Alida Bosshardt, Pierre Schunck, Jaap Penraat, Henri Pieck, Christiaan Boers, Hendrik Van Riessen, Johan Benders, Bernardus Ijzerdraat, Gerrit Van Der Veen, Jan Donner, Joop Westerweel, Pedro Tirso Maria Sprockel, Emmy Andriesse, Jim de Booy, Dirk Boonstra, Johannes Roelof Maria Van Den Brink, Han Stijkel, Piet Jongeling, Jan Smallenbroek, Gerben Wagenaar. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 145. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Johan Cornelis Princen (November 21, 1925, The Hague February 22, 2002, Jakarta), better known as Poncke Princen, was a Dutch anti-Nazi fighter and colonial soldier. In 1948, he deserted, joined the pro-independence guerrillas in the then Dutch Indies, lived out the rest of his life in Indonesia, became a prominent human rights activist and political dissident under various dictatorial regimes in his adopted country and consequently spent considerable time in detention. For some people, especially among his former Dutch comrades-in-arms, he was a despicable traitor. Others - especially in Indonesia and East Timor, but also in his original homeland and in many other countries - admired him as a hero. Princen and his three siblings were the children of free-thinking parents with anarchist tendencies. His great-grandfather had been a deserter from military service, who had long been chased by the law and whose life was described in a book by Anton Coolen. De...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=8489950 ... Read more

Product Description
An underground favorite, The Ten Thousand Things tells the story of Felicia, who, pregnant and alone, returns from Holland to the Indonesian islands where she was born and where her powerful grandmother still lives. Felicia's homecoming brings her close to an uncanny and dangerous world, full of mystery and violence, where objects tell tales, the dead come and go, and the past is as potent as the present. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Phrases Just Right, Startling
"The Professor" is a gem embedded in a sleek silver bracelet.A fantastic novel like the South American variety.Reoccurring phrases are just right, startling.

The last member of a Dutch colonial family lives on an island in the Moluccas (the Spice Islands, now of Indonesia).Section one lyrically describes the island.Section two flashes back to her girlhood with her grandmother; her return from schooling in Holland, where she had a baby; the baby's growth; and the circumstances of his death.Section three is formed by three independent short stories in which a murder occurs.In the fourth section, Felicia, "the lady of the Small Garden," meets the ghosts of those murdered in the previous section and tries to come to terms with the semantic distinction between "being killed" and "dying."

First published in Dutch in 1955.Translated by Hans Koning.

Magical
Enchanting story that swirls with a gently mystical appreciation for Ambon in the colonial era, full of observations of local mystical culture and a deep, sometimes ambivalent love for the island.

literary fragments
what i find most striking about the other reviews of this book is their failure to comment on the fact that this is not a novel.it's a collection of fused fragments.there is a good novella here ,three pretty good short stories and a pair of bookends.the bookends are aliterary device aimed at contriving a unity that doesn't flow from what you read.there is a rather boring "foreward" and a moderately more interesting "afterward".i suspect that either the author or an editor concludedrightly that there wasn't much of a market for the fragments of an unknown elderly writer . hence it was decided,this was going to be a novel even if it wasn't.what difference does it make ? well i was so bored by the"lovely","atmoospheric","foreward" that i almost stopped reading the book. i assumed this was an integral part of a novel and not a good portent. as it turns out you can easily skip this part and get on to the meat of the book.in most instances you'll be glad you did.dermout was a good writer.she wasn't a novelist.knowing that will probably increase most peoples pleasure in reading the book ,particularly those who are impatient with seemingly unending description.i almost hate to say it but dermout would have benefited from readingsimenon.

"A singular, mysterious book like nothing else"
Published in Holland in 1955, this has earned a lot of praise for being a singular, mysterious book like nothing else. It's the story of a Indonesian, Felicia, who returns from Holland to her native Indonesia with her baby son.

Beautiful & True to the Place
Much has been said in praise of this book before, so I would only like to add that not only is it beautifully written, but it also reflects a deep understanding of the place where the story unfolds. Thus the author paints a realistic (though sad) picture of the Moluccas and their people, rather than just using them as an exotic background to her story. ... Read more

Product Description
hardcover, dust jacket has large mar on front top and shows lots of wear, excellent binding and clean pages inside ... Read more

Product Description
Do you experience poverty or a lack of finances in your life? Do you struggle to find proper work? Are you a churchgoer, listening to those promises without progressing in life? If you are experiencing these things, then Born to be Rich is the book for you. It unveils the truth and purpose of prosperity: it is your birthright to be wealthy and healthy. You will read arguments in contrast to those you have heard before that it is very devout to pursue wealth. Once you are liberated from all those religious misconceptions, you will be able to get what you desire and live the abundant life, which was preordained by the Creator. Every person, consciously or unconsciously, desires to be wealthy. No matter what the current economic circumstances are, you will be successful when you pursue the way of thinking laid out in this book. ... Read more