''My Little War'' ( nl, Mijn kleine oorlog) is the fourth novel by

Louis Paul Boon Louis Paul Boon (15 March 1912, in Aalst, Belgium, Aalst – 10 May 1979, in Erembodegem) was a Belgian writer of novels, poetry, pornography, columns and art criticism. He was also a painter. He is best known for the novels ''My Little War'' (1947 ...

, first published in 1947. A translation was produced by Paul Vincent in 2010.

Origin

At the end of 1944, Boon started a series of chronicles in the

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

weekly ''Sunday Post''. In 1946 he collected the 33

short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

and added non-related fragments from his notebooks to each story, which appeared as a book in 1947. In 1960, Boon revised the work for a second edition that more closely reflects Dutch standards for correct language. See chapter two of Vanheste (1989, link below) for a scholarly study of the textual history.

Content

''My Little War'' contains some thirty short stories, each of two pages on average, dealing with the troubles of the 'man in the street' during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and the German Occupation of Belgium. Most characters appear in only one story, hence the only character that can be considered somewhat of the main character is the

narrator Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the a ...

himself, Louis. He is the

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...

in the first chronicles and the witness in others, while still others have only reached him by hearsay. in addition to the publication history, the content have led readers and scholars alike to consider the book rather as a collection of stories than a novel. In fact, the book is much more of a unity than it is credited for. For instance, the narrator insists that the reader could just as easily be the writer, and this equation of "me" and "you" is consistently held up throughout all parts of the book. Hence an argument can be made to qualify it as a highly originally shaped novel.

Reception

Upon publication, and for some decades after that, ''My Little War'' was often overlooked and sold poorly. But as readers and scholars began to study Boon's other works and understood the nature of his art better and better, the book acquired the reputation of being the inauguration of Boon's major phase. In recent decades it has attracted a huge body of commentary, as an online search for the original title in Dutch will quickly reveal.

External links

*Bert Vanheste
''Want uw vijand wie is dat: Louis Paul Boon: Mijn kleine oorlog''
Querido, 1989, ch. 2. 1947 Belgian novels 1947 in Belgium Novels set during World War II Novels set in Belgium Dutch-language novels {{1940s-WWII-novel-stub

Origin

Content

Reception

See also

External links