''The Assault'' (original title in
Dutch: ''De aanslag'') is a 1982
novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
by
Dutch author
Harry Mulisch
Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch ( ; 29 July 1927 – 30 October 2010) was a Dutch writer. He wrote more than 80 novels, plays, essays, poems, and philosophical reflections. Mulisch's works have been translated into over thirty languages.
Along with Wi ...
.
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
published an English translation by
Claire Nicolas White in 1985. It covers 35 years in the life of the lone survivor of a night in
Haarlem
Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...
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 ...
when the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
occupation forces, finding a Dutch
collaborator murdered, retaliate by killing most of the family in front of whose home the body was found. According to the ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', this novel "made his reputation at home and abroad".
It was translated into dozens of languages and immediately adapted into a film of the
same name that won the 1986
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...
.
Plot
The novel consists of a brief prologue and five "episodes" dated 1945, 1952, 1956, 1966, and 1981.
Twelve-year-old Anton Steenwijk is living with his parents and older brother on the outskirts of Haarlem in January 1945 under
Nazi Occupation
German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...
. One evening they hear shots and discover that Fake Ploeg, a prominent Dutch collaborator, has been shot. They watch as their neighbors, the Kortewegs, a father and his teen-age daughter, move the body from where it fell in front of their house to a position in front of the Steenwijks' house. In the chaotic hours that follow, Anton's family is killed and their house torched, while he spends a night in a dark police station cell in
Heemstede being comforted by an unseen young woman prisoner. As Nazi authorities transport him to Amsterdam a German soldier dies trying to protect him when the convoy is attacked from the air. They place him in the care of an aunt and uncle there.
The author writes: "All the rest is postscript–the cloud of ash that rises from the volcano, circles around the earth, and continues to rain down on all its continents for years." In the decades that follow, Anton becomes an
anesthesiologist
Anesthesiology, anaesthesiology, or anaesthesia is the medical specialty concerned with the total perioperative care of patients before, during and after surgery. It encompasses anesthesia, intensive care medicine, critical emergency medicine, ...
, marries twice, and has a child by each of his wives. He lives with his repressed memories and limited understanding of the events that destroyed his family, uncertain of others' motivations that night and suppressing any instinct to discover more about the way events unfolded, though what he knows is incomplete and presents riddles more than resolution. He learns more details through a series of chance encounters, not by seeking out witnesses and survivors. Only occasionally do his emotions overwhelm him. He weighs motivations and unintended consequences, the moral judgments made and risks taken, the interplay of intention and accident, the actions he and his brother and parents took or failed to take. Anton's discoveries take place against the background of the emergence of Dutch society from the war, the development of new political alignments associated with the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, the anti-establishment
Provo movement, and a huge anti-nuclear demonstration.
He returns to Haarlem for the first time in 1952 to attend a party. He visits his old neighbors, the Beumers, and then the monument erected to honor in his parents and 29 others who died the same night in reprisal for Ploeg's assassination. A few years later, he chances upon an old schoolmate, Fake Ploeg's son who bears his father's name. This Fake compares their outcomes, Anton an orphan and he the son of collaborators whose mother became a cleaning woman to support her children: "'We're in the same class, your parents are shot, but you're doing medical studies all the same, whereas my father was shot and I repair water heaters.'" Fake defends his father as an anti-Communist and blames the death of the Steenwijks on the Communist resistance fighters who knew that reprisals would follow their assassination of his father. Anton rejects his logic: "'Your father was killed by the Communists with premeditation because they decided that it was essential, but my family was senselessly slaughtered by Fascists, of whom your father was one.'" Fake counters: "'As your house went up in flames, we got the news that our father was dead.... I've thought of what you went through; did you ever do the same for me?'"
In 1966, Anton attends a funeral of an older man, an associate of his father-in-law. Socializing after the service, as many old resistance members debate current politics, Anton overhears someone recounting a resistance action and realizes the subject is Ploeg's assassination. He speaks at length with this man, Cor Takes, one of those for whom the battle against fascism is very much alive, who opposes commuting the sentences of collaborators just because they have become old and infirm: "'Just hand him to me and I'll split his throat. With a pocketknife if necessary.'" Anton learns more details of how Ploeg's assassination was planned and executed as well as the likely identity of the woman who comforted him that night. He shares what he knows with Takes, whose own knowledge of that night has just as many gaps as Anton's. Finally, in 1981, when Anton is soon to become a grandfather, he meets one of the neighbors who moved Ploeg's body in front of his family's house. He learns why the Kortewegs rushed out to move the body and why they moved it toward the Steenwijks and not in the other direction, the one reason absurd and the other incontestably the moral choice based on what the Kortewegs knew that night.
Reception
In the Netherlands the novel's sale of 200,000 copies made it a "runaway success" even as it addressed the ongoing problem of reconciling the nation to its past, including its record of collaboration with its German occupiers.
The novel received rave reviews in the U.S. Though called a "political thriller"
[ for the way it slowly reveals its secrets, another critic described it as "the story of a man of inaction; his inner voice does not repeat 'lest we forget,' but 'lest we remember.'" Another called it "a detective story, of the superior Simenon variety, with intriguing twists and turns and a definite solution.... also a morality tale..., a dark fable about design and accident, strength and weakness, and the ways in which guilt and innocence can overlap and intermingle." He praised Mulisch for his "exceptional skill and imagination" in establishing characters and social settings", with "a hundred small touches sustain the effect of psychological truthfulness".
In the '' New Yorker'', ]John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth ...
called the novel "brilliant" and "a kind of detective story" that "combines the fascination of its swift, skillfully unfolded plot with that of a study on the
Film adaptation
The novel was adapted to film in 1986 by Fons Rademakers">sychology of repressed memory".
Film adaptation
The novel was adapted to film in 1986 by Fons Rademakers, who produced and directed the film. It stars Derek de Lint, Marc van Uchelen and Monique van de Ven. The film won the 1986 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...
, the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film is a Golden Globe Award presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Until 1986, it was known as the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film, meaning that any non-American film coul ...
and the Golden Space Needle
The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees. The SIFF runs for more th ...
of the Seattle International Film Festival.
Comic book adaptation
In 2015 ''The Assault'' was adapted into a graphic novel
A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...
by Milan Hulsing.
See also
*''The Sorrow of Belgium
''The Sorrow of Belgium'' ( nl, Het verdriet van België) is a 1983 novel by the Belgian author Hugo Claus (1929–2008). The book, widely considered Claus's most important work and "the most important Dutch-language novel of the twentieth century ...
'' (1983) by Hugo Claus
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Assault, The
Dutch historical novels
Dutch crime novels
1982 novels
Novels by Harry Mulisch
Novels set during World War II
Novels set in the Netherlands
Novels set in the 1940s
Novels set in the 1950s
Novels set in the 1960s
Novels set in the 1980s
Dutch novels adapted into films
Novels adapted into comics