6/6/2023 0 Comments The Assault by Harry Mulisch![]() ![]() Questions surrounding the “assault”, both in terms of what actually occurred and the social and moral implications, are gradually answered in the subsequent episodes, despite Anton’s passivity. Anton is taken away and after being interrogated, is taken to his aunt and uncle in Amsterdam. In retaliation, the Nazis burn down his house and his parents and older brother are killed. ![]() Fake Ploeg, a member of the Dutch Nazi party, is shot dead and then moved by the neighbours to the front of twelve-year-old Anton’s house in Haarlem. The chronological story then begins during the famine of 1945, near the end of the Second World War. The chapters are preceded by a prologue in which we learn about the place where the events take place and meet the protagonist, Anton Steenwijk. These traces gradually become clearer in the course of the story, which is told in five episodes, like the five acts in a Greek tragedy. ![]() The theme is introduced using a motto from the Epistulae of Pliny the Younger, about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius: a darkness that abruptly falls and still leaves its mark years later in the form of a cloud of ash. The novel is also “classic” in its clear structure and in the subtle reference it makes to literature from antiquity, both in its theme and form. ![]()
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