A Guardian Angel Recalls

Starred review from August 30, 2021
Hermans (An Untouched House) interweaves a bitter, occasionally darkly comic moral fable with an unforgettable account of the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, first published in 1971 and seamlessly translated by Colmer. In early May 1940, the Netherlands has so far remained neutral, but in only a matter of days will surrender after the firebombing of Rotterdam. Simon “Bert” Alberegt, a prosecutor, having just put his Communist girlfriend on a ship to England and safety, accidentally hits a little girl with his car, killing her. In a cowardly act that sets him on a downward spiral, he hides the body and proceeds to his appointment in the courtroom (he is prosecuting a journalist who has bad-mouthed Hitler in print, violating a relatively new Dutch law prohibiting such speech against “friendly heads of state”). It turns out Bert’s victim was an undocumented Jewish refugee whose parents are in a concentration camp, and she was in the care of an elderly refugee couple aided by Bert’s best friend, Erik. Tormented more by the fear of getting caught than by genuine guilt, Bert stubbornly fails to take responsibility. Narrating the story is his long-suffering guardian angel, who mostly protects Bert from harm, but cannot prevent his making atrocious decisions. Devils also tempt Bert to succumb to his desire for suicide, and arrogantly rationalize his misdeeds. Hermans does a wonderful job tracking Bert’s ethical, moral, and spiritual roller coaster, which fascinatingly mirrors the Dutch Nazi sympathizers and fifth columnists who enabled fascism. This should establish Hermans as a modern Dostoyevsky.

Starred review from August 15, 2021
On the eve of the Nazis' attack on Rotterdam and occupation of the Netherlands, a Dutch public prosecutor tries to flee the Germans--and a horrific car accident in which he runs over a 6-year-old girl. The portly prosecutor, Alberegt, impulsively tosses the body of the girl into a clump of bushes, later learning that she was a Jewish child smuggled out of Czechoslovakia by a wealthy publisher friend of his to save her from the Nazis. The angel of the book's title, who provides a running first-person commentary, pleads with Alberegt to report the death, but the prosecutor is more open to the argument posed by the devil also along for the ride: "If the Germans have bombed Holland and burnt it down to the ground, do you think anybody's going to worry about some kid who got run over?" The Dutch, it seems, will do anything to deny reality, insisting that Hitler has no interest in their neutral nation, and if he did, Dutch forces would take care of the Germans. At the same time, public figures go out of their way to send signals to the Germans that they have nothing against the F�hrer by prosecuting those who insult him. They're also happy to discriminate against Jews, albeit with twisted logic: "The only way to be accepted by a Jew is to say, Look, of course I'm an anti-Semite like everyone else, but you happen to seem like a decent chap." With its hapless protagonist, acerbic tone, and laughable rumors of war (including German paratroopers disguised as nuns), much of this newly translated 1971 novel by the late Hermans is a comedy of errors. But its scenes of destruction are shattering and surreal. "I've been hit. I've been hit," cries a girl before she falls over and dies and "short bursts of heavenly music permeated the groaning, the cries and screams." With its discussions of art and politics, the book takes on even greater depth. A sly but scorching Dutch masterpiece.

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