The Sorrow of Belgium

My rating of four stars reflects the fact that I give five stars to the first part and three to the last part. The first third of the book is a beautiful, heartbreaking story of one schoolboy's love for his male friend. However many schoolboy romances there are, we can always use more of them. On the other hand, the last two-thirds of the book gives us an overlong mishmash of interactions between largely uninteresting characters (with some notable exceptions, such as the boy who earns a little money by sharing his body with a man in the neighborhood). I do recommend the book overall, but understand that you may find it a real slog getting to the end.

The sorrow of Belgium is a long, rich and stunning novel, poetic and at times heart-rending. The book is obviously the masters (this is how they call Hugo Claus in the newspapers and reviews here in Belgium and Holland) most impressive and most beautiful novel and has everything in it to become (if it isn't it already) a classic, also outside Belgium. Anyone who likes 20th century literature should read this book, it has everything in it from Proust, Joyce, and Faulkner to Garcia Marquez and ... Claus. Just read the book and make your own opinion.

Hugo Claus, most famous writer in the Low Countries, wrote this "piece de resistance". For his oeuvre he should be awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature.The work, although looking quite bulky, fascinates from the first till the last page. It decribes in a painfull manner the hypocritical way well-to-do families live in pre-war Belgium, how religious superficiality leads to short-sighted nationalism, conservatism and collaboration with members of the occupating "Herrenvolk".Reading it, it helps to understand the ambiguous nature of the kingdom of Belgium (language, politics, economy and culture).

I agree with Ozzie from Ghent, although I read The Sorrow of Belgium in English after having lived in Flanders. It gives a real feel for life in a West Flemish town (? Kortrijk) in the years leading up to and including World War II. Yes, if you know the Low Countries you will feel more than a little nostalgia. But when will someone translate Claus's "Geruchten" (Rumors)?