Originally published in 1950, and now translated into English by the Pushkin Press, the teenager at the centre of this novel is so bored he wishes for all-out war...
October 24, 2025 10:35
The last year or so has been a remarkable time for Dutch literature. First, the reissue of 1982’s The Assault by Harry Mulisch, then Yael van der Wouden’s The Safe Keep and now the publication in English of Fall, Bomb, Fall by Gerrit Kouwenaar (1923-2014). All three are haunting novels about the Dutch experience of the Second World War told from the perspective of young people.
Fall, Bomb, Fall was originally published in 1950, when the author was in his early twenties, and was then republished in 2023, in Holland, to mark his centenary. He was just 17 when the Germans occupied the Netherlands, the same age as Karel Ruis, the boy at the centre of the novel.
It takes place entirely within the few days after the German invasion in May 1940. When we first meet him, Karel has “an overwhelming feeling of boredom”. “I do so wish something would happen,” he thinks. “I wish a bomb would fall.” The first thing to break the boredom is a secret. Karel’s Uncle Robert gives the boy a letter to deliver to a woman but he mustn’t tell anyone else. The second thing is far more momentous. That night the Germans invade. What is most striking about the novel is that Uncle Robert’s letter turns out to be more interesting than the outbreak of the war and certainly more interesting to Karel.
One of the main reasons is because of the relationship between Uncle Robert, the most fascinating character in the book, and the Jewish woman he’s written to. There are only four Jewish characters in the novel, one of Karel’s classmates, his maths teacher and the woman and her daughter. And yet the exotic Mrs Mexocos and her teenage daughter have a huge impact on Karel and break the boredom of his teenage life. They also do something extraordinary to the novel. They bring it to life with talk of affairs and Jewish refugees and what the Germans might do to the Jews. And they bring Karel to life in an exciting way that nothing else can do, just as it seems they have done with Uncle Robert. In the most interesting scene in the novel, he tells his nephew: “There is a thing of joy in my life that gives me the strength to weather fortune’s blows.” And it turns out that this “thing of joy”, also brings joy and life to Karel. It breaks the dullness of his schoolboy life, which is superbly captured by the novel.
That, in the end, surprisingly, is what this novel is about.
Fall, Bomb, Fall, by Gerrit Kouwenaar
Pushkin Press
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