Product Description
A novel that probes moral devastation in the wake of the slaughter of an innocent family by the Nazis in retaliation for the association with a Dutch collaborator. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Fine book
Book came on time.Condition as listed.Happy with purchase.Would do it again.AA++

The Assault - and the consequences
One night in Holland, in 1945, towards the end of the war, a family is killed by the Nazis. Only the youngest son, Anton Steenwijk lives. The book follows the life of Anton over ensuing 35 years.

It's broken up into 5 episodes, several years apart, each of which sheds new perspective on the assault.(Specifically, in each episode Anton meets up with a different person associated with the attack - the son of a Nazi collaborator, a member of the resistance, a neighbor, etc.)

It's different. It's not so much of a thriller as an examination of how what happened in the war affected things long after the fact. The writing is clear and polished. It's a thoughtful consideration of how war impacts peoples lives.

That said, I give it about 3.5 stars. Good but not great. Mainly, I didn't *get* the main character Anton. The minor characters were better done. Anton seemed like an observer. I didn't get how he felt about anything. The details of his life were just sketched in. This made the book fall kind of flat for me, despite it's considerable virtues.

Good story/bad translation
I was looking forward to this book because I knew of Mulisch's history and reputation. The protagonist is unable to avoid confronting a traumatic night during World War Two, and finds himself unwittingly drawn back to that night, and confronting the complexity of moral issues that emerge from his discoveries. In this way, The Assault resembles The Reader and Out Stealing Horses, both of which are very well translated. Unfortunately, The Assault is poorly rendered and doesn't live up to its potential.

bad memories
My grandson's teacher assigned THE ASSAULT as one of three books he was to read this term.He and I are sharing "the experience."I would say he is in the age-group to begin reading such a novel and it certainly is another way of looking at the horrors of WWII.Anton is a bit too young to be able to understand all that is going on because he is so young - but as he begins to "age" the memories begin to play a role in his life. He is truly a victim of his past and is trying to live a life in the present, but there is a constant replaying of what has happened to him.I hope my grandson and I can share some of the poignant points of this life lived so tragically.I can only imagine the memories of the holocaust victims who still dream such terrible nightmares.

Thoughtful and provocative
One can get a vivid enough introduction to this book from previous customer reviews, with the great majority of which I share an enthusiasm.This is an economically-written story centered on a single violent incident, the exploration of which enlightens the life of one individual, a set of related individuals, and the entire society and the era it suffered through, that is, Netherlands during the Nazi occupation.Written without pretentions, without philosophizing, seemingly straightforward, yet I was left with layer after layer of emotional responses, intellectual ironies, and an understanding that I had not so fully brought to bear.While deceptive in its style and the seeming simplicity of its central event, and even the method of mystery-book clues-and-discovery, it is profound in its effect.
... Read more

Product Description
* Harry Mulisch's The Assault was an international bestseller which was made into an Oscar Award-winning film. This magnificent epic has been compared to works by Umberto Eco, Thomas Mann, and Dostoevsky. Harry Mulisch's magnum opus is a rich mosaic of twentieth-century trauma in which many themes--friendship, loyalty, family, art, technology, religion, fate, good, and evil--suffuse a suspenseful and resplendent narrative. The story begins with the meeting of Onno and Max, two complicated individuals whom fate has mysteriously and magically brought together. They share responsibility for the birth of a remarkable and radiant boy who embarks on a mandated quest that takes the reader all over Europe and to the land where all such quests begin and end. Abounding in philosophical, psychological and theological inquiries, yet laced with humor that is as infectious as it is willful, The Discovery of Heaven lingers in the mind long after it has been read. It not only tells an accessible story, but also convinces one that it just might be possible to bring order into the chaos of the world through a story.Amazon.com Review
Dutch novelist Harry Mulisch has created an epic tale of love,friendship, and divine intervention in this cerebral story of heavenlyinfluence. On earth, the novel revolves around the friendship of abrilliant, charismatic astronomer and a talented linguist born on thesame day. The two men also happen to share a lover, a woman of simplebeauty who is a gifted cellist. These relationships, both intellectualand intimate, produce several intriguing conversations about science,art, and theology, and a child of uncertain paternity.The child'sbirth is closely followed by a number of mysterious accidents,spirited affairs, untimely deaths, and other acts that reveal theinfluence of higher powers. Quinten, the star-fated child, has amission from on high to return the covenant God made with man beforehe was led astray by science and the dark influence of the devil. Anengrossing, and at times comic, story of theology and science, angels,and earthly desires, is cleverly told in this hugely ambitious novel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (58)

Excellent
I won't spend a lot of time here because there are many in-depth reviews. Overall though this is an excellent book, very well written (even in translation), very clever, with two great protagonists and some incredibly deep ideas scattered throughout (e.g., the historioscope). It does start to drag halfway through when the pace slows way down - but then, can anyone think of a 700+ page novel where that isn't the case? It gradually picks up again and becomes once more inspiring, thought-provoking and hilarious. I give four stars only because, as another reviewer mentioned, the ending just... well, fails. Again, as with so many long and wonderful works, it is difficult to build up to a satisfying climax. A very original voice, though. A book well worth reading.

Mulisch great but falls short of heaven
A wonderful writer (I really like him!), but the ending -- for want of a better word -- failed.

Engrossing and Clever, But Overlong and Overambitious
The Discovery of Heaven having been pressed into my hands by a good friend, and the blurbs on the cover being remarkably glowing, I couldn't wait to dive into it.It's long, but I've enjoyed a number of very long novels.

The relationship between Onno and Max that develops during the first section pulled me in, and I enjoyed the witty repartee and intellectual jousting and theorizing. I looked forward to seeing where this relationship would take me. Certainly, there's plenty of build-up, in the form of angels hinting about the cosmic significance of their machinations through these characters--a device I didn't particularly like or feel added anything to the book's effect.

There are novels that are primarily plot-driven, others that present some very memorable characters, and some that display an unusual facility with language itself. It's nice to have all three, but I'm not sure you can have a really successful novel without having at least one element that's outstanding.I found this one to include a couple of interesting characters, a vague plot that promises more than it delivers, and little in the way of style, although some of that may have been lost in translation.

There was not enough of any of these to sustain my enthusiasm through the book's length, and I found finishing the second half a grind--not so onerous and without its attractions that I didn't finish, but it took continual effort. Once the Max/Onno relationship matures, the pace and interest slow considerably.Mulisch clearly has an active mind and is very well-read, and he led me to ponder many fascinating ideas and apparent paradoxes (he's really into paradoxes), but most of these had little to do with the story itself or the significance of it; it's as though he just stuffs into the novel every intriguing idea he ever thought about.They are primarily window dressing, made part of the personalities of the two bantering main characters, who are continually going off on intellectual tangents. These tangents are also superficial; you read them and think, "That's interesting, I'll have to mention that to my friends," and then he moves on to some other similar diversion in the course of telling the story.

Ultimately, after all of this cleverness, I was surprised to find Mulisch didn't seem to have very much to say in the story itself; although presented as a profound philosophical novel, I didn't find it any more so than, say, The Da Vinci Code. After the first several hundred pages, the plot meanders towards the conclusion for which we wait, and wait.I won't disclose the ending other than to say that I didn't feel after 730 pages that I had been shown some new insight into human nature, or the nature of the universe, etc. In fact, it seemed a bizarre and confusing cop-out, coming after so long a wind-up; a long, drawn-out story to little ultimate effect.But I'd still be interested in reading another of his novels--albeit maybe a shorter one, because Mulisch does have an interesting mind.

I never received this book
This book was supposed to come beginning November, but so far NOTHING at all.
They took my money, but no book.
BAD service.

Overstuffed with disparate themes
The fullest review I have read of this book on Amazon is by Damian Kelleher (30 December 2006), and I suggest you read his review before you read mine, for that saves me from having to repeat what the book is about.Some people might resent that review (though I did not) because it certainly contains spoilers: for example, it alerts the reader not only to the fact that the book changes pace and tone about half way through, but also to the occasion and the reason which prompts that change.It also shows that the complicated Prologue of Part One - in which one Angel explains to another how and why he has manipulated the encounter of Max, Onno and Ada - will only come into its own a long way into the book; without that knowledge, one is puzzled by the Prologue for some 180 pages, because there appears nothing at all supernatural in these encounters or in the well-told story of how the relationship develops: we do not get the feeling that everything in that development is pre-ordained by the Angel to produce a particular result.The same is true of the Prologue to Part Two: here the story is stranger, more dramatic, and the relationships - now also involving Ada's enigmatic mother Sophia - even more complex than in the first; but it could perfectly well stand on its own, detached from anything the Angels had said.

Although I urge you to read Kelleher's review, I cannot say that I agree with everything he says.For example, he says that there is `never the idea that Mulisch is hitting us over the head with his cleverness' and in that respect contrasting him favourably with Umberto Eco.In Part One I had the opposite impression: the conversations between Max and Onno certainly are studded with references to a wide and impressive range of knowledge, but they rarely do more with these references than drop them into the conversation: they mostly do not set off any genuine discussion of these ideas, and in that respect they are, I think, much less stimulating to the reader than the sustained way in which Eco handles ideas (but I have only read The Name of the Rose).They are, in a sense, showing off: for example, Max (and Mulisch, I think) aim to impress by knowing that Beethoven's Grosse Fuge op.133 originated from the conclusion of opus 130. (p.162).

However, in Part Two we do get the beginning of more sustained reflections: for example, Max, the astronomer, thinks about the insignificance of unpredictable events on this earth when seen in he context of the `inhuman reliability' of the vast universe - and yet how hugely significant is the birth of a single human being, and how, though we are so small compared with the universe, our mind is yet great enough to contain the awareness of it and to reflect on it.

In Part Three we see Ada's son, the Wunderkind Quinten, growing up.A child's imagination is often surrealistic and at the same time strikingly insightful. This particular child triggers off metaphysical ideas on which the adults expand and expound at some length, freewheeling as they go along.They involve astronomy, architecture, music, become increasingly complex and recondite, andnow begin to connect somewhat with what we have heard from the Angels; and their activity manifests itself not least in a supernatural intervention at the end of that section.

The supernatural becomes strong in the last part of the book.It begins with the Angel sending a raven to Onno.It will put in a mysterious appearance again later in this part; initially it merely encourages Onno to ruminate - at great length, with some originalityand again in a freewheeling style - on such practical matters as the origin of political power.But for most of this part we are in Dan Brown territory (though the Da Vinci Code is a lot easier to follow than what we have here):Quinten, now 17, is in Rome and, piecing together biblical and other texts, he is convinced that the Tablets of the Law , enclosed in the lost Ark of the Covenant, are now actually inside the altar of the Sancta Sanctorum in the Piazza San Giovanni in Lateran, and he intends to steal them ... Of course it all has to end in more surrealism.At the end one of the Angels purports to explain it all to the other Angel - but, frankly,he hasn't managed to explain it to me!

I have noted just a few of the many strands in this book: some are well-developed (like Onno's involvement in Dutch politics), while others are very thin: for example, it is hard to remember who is who among theseventeen original inhabitants of the castle in Part Two.The book is in fact rather a ragbag into which Mulisch has packed everything fromphilosophy through the politics of the 1980s to a tour round the sights of Venice, Florence and Rome.He has some arresting and interesting thoughts, but at times he strikes me as pretentious and at other times, especially in Part Four, tediously didactic.I think he tries to do too much.I bought the book because I had been impressed by Mulisch's earlier novel, `The Assault' to which I gave five stars (see my review); but I was relieved when I had finished this one - as well as disappointed by what was supposed to be its climax. ... Read more

Product Description
A bracing meditation on the nature of evil and a moving evocation of the human heart, Siegfried is one of Harry Mulisch’s most powerful novels. After a reading of his work, renowned Dutch author Rudolf Herter, who had recently commented in a television interview that it may be only through fiction that the uniquely evil figure of Adolf Hitler can be truly comprehended, is approached by an elderly couple. The pair reveal that as domestic servants in Hitler’s Bavarian retreat in the waning years of the war, they were witness to the jealously guarded birth of Siegfried—the son of Hitler and Eva Braun. For more than fifty years they have kept silent about the child they once raised as their own. Only now and only to Herter are they willing to reveal their astonishing story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Does not reach all the way...
This book is perhaps a bit more complex and deep than most readers, including I, are used to.
I think he bases his book on a quote from Nietzsche: "When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." That is what the protagonist of the book does, and pays a frightening price for enlightment.
Mulisch actually comes very close to explaining Hitler, and the nature of evil, in this book. I think many readers are put off by his slightly mystical explanation of the phenomenom of Hitler. However, many more authors have tried to explain Hitler from a purely rational POV and have failed.
Hitler was banal, a blank, a nothing. He only defined himself as a leader. To thrive he was dependent on the unidivded attention of multitudes.
I suppose here is where the book stumbles: Mulisch explains Hitler, but he does not explain his followers! Did Hitler have this ability to hypnotise because anyone could read in their own wishes and fears into Hitler's emptiness?
Also, we will have to remember that towards the end of the book the narraor is not fully reliable (!). His ramblings, while very interesting, about Hitler's mystical connection to Nietzsche - Hitler as the negative opposite of the philosopher - can be seen as the insights of a man already insane.
So, in short, my verdict is that this is an uncomplete masterpiece.

An essay disguised as a novel
An interesting look into Mulisch's thoughts about Hitler and the meaning of evil, with only the thin trappings of an implausible novel wrapped around them.That said, I still thought it was worth reading.

A sinister study of a distraught mind
Rudolf Herter, a famous Dutch author, arrives in Vienna for a reading and some interviews. But what he thinks is yet another mission to promote his latest book turns out to be the start of a sinister quest. During a television interview, in a moment when he was out of his usual set of answers, he makes a statement that not only surprises his audience, but most of all himself: I want to catch Hitler and place him in such an environment that his true spirit is revealed. When an old couple offers to help him reach this singular goal, he gets an answer to a question that he was not prepared to ask.

With Siegfried Harry Mulisch wrote a very powerful and at the same time estranging novel. As one can imagine, a dive into the deranged mind of Adolf Hitler will not leave anyone undisturbed. But when that same experience leaves you with a discovery that is so horrible that it is better kept hidden from the public, its effect could be destructive. With a remarkable ease succeeds Mulisch in pulling the reader slowly into an idea that will spook the mind of any reader. The narrative is kept sober on purpose, as not to break the effect of its meaning.

Sadly enough, just at the time the story reaches its climax, Mulisch decides to open up his full vocabulary to describe what it "actually" all means. Apart from being quite incomprehensible to the normal reader, it turns out to be completely unnecessary page stuffing. I can understand that an intelligent author sometimes feels the need to show off with some very deep thoughts, but in this masterfully build-up plot it fits like the devil in a blue dress. If you look at it from another perspective it could even be interpreted as an insult to the reader, where the author takes the reader by the hand to explain some difficult concepts.

Apart from this let-down at the end Siegfried stay an intriguing study of a distraught mind that reads like a full fletched psychological thriller.

Being Nothingness
I just finished this book maybe 5 minutes ago and am so impressed with it. A fasciniating story with a real sting in its tail.I left one star off for the occasional lapses into overwritten philosophy quoting, but it's an intriguing and provoking book

Rather vain book on an intriguing subject
Rudolf Herter is an, in his own opinion brilliant, elderly Dutch writer with an Austrian background. After a lecture in Vienna he gets in contact with the former personal servants of Hitler and via them he finds out that Hitler and Eva Braun had a son and that this son met an untimely death. He thinks that through these revelations he has also gotten a better insight into the being of Hitler, but in the end this insight proves to be fatal.

This book covers an intriguing subject, Hitler. The brilliant Rudolf Herter radiates his brilliance a little bit too obviously and this makes this alter ago of the author rather irritating, especially in the first part of the book. As the story develops, the book becomes more intriguing and more pleasant to read. But in the end the question remains whether Mulisch succeeded in explaining Hitler and one can wonder whether anybody will ever be able to explain Hitler. ... Read more

Product Description
Internationally renowned novelist Harry Mulisch's The Procedure is a haunting and fascinating novel about two men who try to create life but fail. In the late sixteenth century, Rabbi Jehudah Löw, in order to guarantee the safety of the Jews in Prague, creates a golem by following a procedure outlined in a third-century cabalist text. Four hundred years later, Victor Werker, a Dutch biologist mourning the loss of his stillborn daughter, causes an international uproar when he creates a complex organic clay crystal that can reproduce and has a metabolism. But his unsettling discovery takes its toll as his inner and outer demons pursue him around the world, from California to Venice, Cairo, and Jerusalem. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Unforgettable!
It all started with the creation of Adam. But doesn't the bible tell us that man and woman were created equally? If so, Eve could not have been the first woman, because she was created out of Adam's rib. Who is than the first woman? The answer: Lilith. When Victor Werker is born nobody has a clue that he will turn out to be one of the most renowned scientist of the twenty-first century. His future accomplishment will come close to what God did when he created man: he will give life to death material, a new form of life called the eobiont. But is this a good thing or will he have to justify his actions because he unwillingly created an evil Lilith?

Harry Mulish is at his best in this metaphysical story about the most powerful subject of all time: life. At the start of the story you easily loose track of what it is all about, but this is clearly done on purpose. As some kind of inauguration the reader is offered a speed course in the biblical study of letters and numbers. Once you have struggled through this first episode the impact of what follows is even more surreal.

Slowly but steadily the scope of the book widens and flirts with topics like the human genome, twin studies and Egyptology. Although the book nears epic proportions, Mulish never looses track of the essence. Constantly he surprises the reader with new viewpoints and digs deeper in the soul of the protagonist. Victor Werker is not different from anyone else, although his impact on science has been enormous. On the run for the past, he does nothing but chase his own shadow. When finally he notices that the future has much in common with what has been, he can do nothing but start to embrace his past. Like atoms that collide, this act of defeatism leads to total catastrophe, but also to the sweetest redemption.

Only a limited amount of books can force the reader to start rereading them the moment you turn that last page. The Procedure is certainly one of the few. Without seemingly any effort Harry Mulish has again created a Masterpiece.

Thoughtful Reflection on Genetics and Life
"The Procedure" (2001), by Harry Mulisch (b. 1927), is the thoughtful story of Victor Werker, a genetics scientist at UC Berkeley who explores the meaning of life from a scientific angle, inventing a new form of life called the eobiont, and with a philosophical tone, writing fatherly autobiographical letters to his daughter Aurora, named for the Roman goddess of dawn.

The book starts with the legendary story of Rabbi Jehudah Loew (Löw), a leader of the Jewish community of Prague in 1592, called by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to make him a golem, a man-made being of clay. He fears sacrilege, not to mention abject failure, but ultimately agrees. Loew is a man of Hebrew letters, the symbolic glyphs of his faith. Will his knowledge of those sacred symbols help him uncover the metaphysical key to life, bestowing it upon lifeless clay?

From Loew's colorful Prague, we jump back to our own time, to the story of Victor Werker's birth in Amsterdam a few years after World War Two, and the various tales and complications of the pregnancy and birth. Victor becomes a geneticist, and studies the letters of genetic sequencing, A, C, G, and T, the idiomatic symbols of his own profession. Will his education of those four letters unlock the scientific mystery of life, granting it to lifeless matter?

Victor invents an organism he calls the eobiont, "Life's Dawn". He becomes famous, and suffers the jealousy of Barend Brock, a colleague spurned by Victor after he tries to take credit for Victor's discovery. Victor diarizes his relationship to Clara, including Clara's pregnancy and their break-up, through letters to their daughter Aurora.

This novel is foremost of ideas.Today's metaphysical novelist's challenge seems to update the tale of Frankenstein (or Prometheus) to the age of genetics. Rabbi Loew's story is fascinating, and Victor Werker's struggles are interesting, but the book would benefit by describing more clearly the motivations of Loew and the Emperor, or delving more deeply into Victor's goals in life and career. Such details might help flesh the text out a bit more fully. Mulisch is a fine writer, and his novel "The Assault" (1982) is undoubtedly one of the more brilliant pieces of contemporary fiction from Europe today, but "The Procedure" does not weave tight the threads it has spun.

Nonetheless, "The Procedure" is a well-paced novel (230pp), and contains a number of interesting ideas, regarding the nature of life, love, and history. It can be recommended to anyone who wants to think about the nature of life, and reflect upon the often discordant dichotomy between the spiritual and the scientific.

Timely
Genetic engineering, the mapping of the Human Genome, and Cloning are all intensely debated issues at present. All are generally viewed as parts of the absolute leading edge of high technology. Genetically engineered life forms have been patented, the Human Genome has been mapped, and despite the political and religious protestations, cloning has continued to duplicate ever more complex replicas of life. And while laws are contemplated and passed forbidding the cloning of a human, it is not only likely, but also probable that such research proceeds somewhere.

The creation of life by mortal man has been routinely held as the ultimate taboo against nature and deeply held religious beliefs. Harry Mulisch writes in his book, "The Procedure", of two instances of creation and demonstrates the idea and perhaps the practice is not only far from new, it is centuries old. In the late 16th Century a Rabbi creates a Golem for a King, the procedure for which is outlined in a 3rd Century Text. Then in the 20th Century a Scientist creates a very primitive organic organism from non-organic materials, which gains the name eobliant. A Golem and the primitive organism that is created 400 years later have little in common as final products. The latter is a test tube creation while the former is, well the book will explain.

The commonality between these two events is obvious, and if I read the work correctly, the obvious is not what the author intended. The writing is deceptively straightforward to read. The Rabbi has an arguably valid and selfless reason for what he does, our contemporary scientist does not. The author diverges along the way with the tale of Frankenstein, the author and her contemporaries, but writing about an act and practicing it are widely separated issues.

Our scientist is also portrayed as being at the very least eccentric. He relates much of his story through letters he writes to his daughter who never lived. While the letters are to her, they are sent to the woman who would have been the child's mother. She left him for he failed her at the critical moment in their relationship, a moment that should not have been an issue for a father much less a man of science, and a man who was manipulating artificial life himself. For all the notoriety his creation has brought him, he gains no piece of mind, and constantly erodes as a person until he is having fictional conversations with a woman that would have been his wife about the cloning of their stillborn child. Cloning is a physical reproduction only, the mind, or the soul, if you prefer, is not replicated.

As I mentioned the book can read as deceptively straightforward, and my reading may be completely off the mark. Either way the book is a great piece of work, and a tremendous read. More than one reading would probably be appropriate.

Yet another endlessly satisying masterpiece from Mulisch
In many ways, I admire this book more than Mulisch's deservedly decorated opus The Discovery of Heaven. The Procedure is a tightly written novel that manages to incorporate a number of TDOH's humanist themes in a more complex and disturbing manner. This book is much, much more than a re-telling of the golem myth and a cautionary tale about pride. (And in case you hadn't noticed, Mulisch is proud to be an egomaniac so he ain't about to warn anyone about pride anytime soon.) The two odd chapters that open the book are easy to overlook once the narrative begins to unfold, but they ultimately serve as a sort of Rosetta stone for unraveling the novel's mysteries. When a book has the epigraph "So cleverly did his art conceal its art," the author is warning the reader to pay very close attention. I don't want to argue that this book displays an "either you get it or you don't" dynamic, because it's complex enough to yield new interpretations every time you read it, but, of the dozen or so reviews I've read, only one mentioned what I believe to be is the central metaphor of the novel. I find this troubling only because the mainstream reviews suggest that this is a minor, simple work that is easily digestible and of little consequence. Newsflash: when the brain and book collide, it's not always the book that is wanting. While the protagonist's creation of an a simple organic lifeform from inorganic matter does parallel the rabbi's creation of a golem, the novel's initial chapters suggest a much more immediate parallel to the golem than the largely undefined lifeform created by Victor. I don't want to ruin it for anyone, so I'll just say it's the best novel of the year (outside of Franzen's Corrections) and that everyone should read it. If you haven't read THOD, you should read that first, since it's more straightforward than this book.

No Nobel for Netherlands Author?
When John Updike writes in The New Yorker that your novel is comparable to Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, you're talking Serious Stuff.Harry Mulisch's name has been bandied about for years now as the leading contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature from the Netherlands, and he has produced at least 2 books that are worthy of that honor; his last novel, The Discovery of Heaven, which received the plaudits offered up by Updike (himself a Nobel candidate), and The Assault, which was made into an Academy Award winning film.Alas, it seems that Mulisch writes a great novel every other time out.The book that came between these two, Last Call, left something to be desired, as does his latest, The Procedure.

The Procedure is about the creative process, specifically the creation of organic matter from an inorganic source.The opening is a riff on the role of language in the Hebraic tradition of God's creation.This segues into a section involving the Jewish legend of the golem -- a rabbi's Cabbalistic attempt to create a being out of clay, and its consequences.The bulk of this novel, which is really quite short, is concerned with the life of a late 20th century scientist, Victor Werker, who, you guessed it, is a Nobel prize candidate based on his discovery of the creation a lifeform from inorganic matter.This is all a backdrop to a novel both about ideas and Werker's personal life.

Mulisch displays his consummate skill as a novelist as he effortlessly uses a variety of narrative techniques; he is as at ease explaining complex scientific concepts as he is relating the dialog of everyday life.His mistake is writing a condensed story in the mode of The Assault where he would have benefitted from exploring these themes in a book with the heft and depth of The Discovery of Heaven.Perhaps 2 books in a row that required that much energy is too much to ask.

While The Discovery of Heaven is equal parts John Irving's Prayer for Owen Meany and Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (religious overtones and conspiracy theories), The Procedure reminded this reader more of Jostein Gaarder's The Solitaire Mystery and Ethan Canin's Carry Me Across the Water, novels about origins and the curious paths lives take.

The Nobel Prize may yet be within reach for Mulisch, but given that it is awarded for a body of work one hopes that he has not hurt his chances with The Procedure, which is slighter and seems more rushed than his earlier, profound books.Perhaps he returns to form in his next novel, Siegfried, not yet available in English.It is about Hitler and Eva Braun's fictional son -- food for thought, which Mulisch never fails to provide in abundance. ... Read more

Product Description
The hero of this novel, Uli Bouwmeester, is, at 78, the last survivor of a famous Dutch theatrical family. The author is regarded as one of Holland's foremost writers, and his previous book, "The Assault", was made into a film which won an Oscar for best foreign film in 1987. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

dazzling! Total theatre; total literature. Magic winding plo
Mulisch accomplished here again a dazzling novel. It is theatre withing theatre. In intricate winding of lives, the old actor, Uli Bouwmeester performs his last role of the last role of the older actor de Vries inShakespeares Tempest, Prospero.As magically as Prospero, the author weavesplaces, situations, characters, times, events in moving, twirling, engagingtapestry. In reference to Poe's "Narratives ..of Pym" the endingtakes the reader through the life transforming and time transcendingnarratives of the protagonist. The novel unfolds with the clarity of greektragedy. But even more than these (after all 3000 years of development) itprovides rare glimpses of insight into the deeper issues of life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Poignant
As an expatriate living in The Netherlands, I've read a number of Mulisch's books. It's part of the naturalization process. Until now I've been either unimpressed or disliked them all. Anti-climatic and forced come to mind. "Two Women", however, redeemed Mulisch for me. I stayed up the entire night reading it. I was breathless.

It is my intention to read it again today. It is a book I feel compelled to study.

I read the book in Dutch and thus I can't vouch for the English translation. In Dutch it is stunning. Poignant. It speaks of the landscape and the culture and the language in a way that few other Dutch classics do.

Soap and hope
A nice little novel that reads really fast and easy, a pleasure to read. But it's to repetive and to much of a soap story, unreal. Maybe Mulisch wants it that way, binding the links to Orpheus and Oidipus. It's not a gay memmoar that it's "though being a lesbian" but instead (the story) lends to the extreme, in the relations, in the happenings aso. - it is just to perfect - one doesn't get the real bad smell of the ordinary day love, it just crash boom bang, wow, can you do that again! She shaves of all her hair, the car that drives by her crashes...after a while nothing surprises you anymore and one just waits for the final bang.
Worth reading but my heart is not bleeding!

Beautiful book!
Unbelievable that this book was written 30 years ago and that it was written by a man...

A beautiful, unadorned love story of the relationship between 2 women, Laura and Sylvia. The narrator, Laura, is on her way to Nice (France), where her mother has died. Meanwhile she recounts the events of the past half year. Out of the blue she fell in love with the much younger Sylvia. For both of them this is their first experience with lesbian love, but everything seems to go pretty normal. Except that it becomes more and more apparent that Sylvia has huge problems communicating and in the end this leads to her fall.

A book that is absolutely worthwhile to read, a classic of Dutch literature.

striking
this book is as if someone has punched you in the gut.i think the end wasn't revealed until it was the end, which is always good.i read this book in german, which may have caused me to miss a couple things, but it was very good nonetheless.

Early Mulish revealingly insightful
Two women does not have the grandeur of a Discovery of Heaven, Last Call or The Assault; but it is not meant in this way. The characters in this smaller novel of Mulish show traces of the themes Mulish uses throughouthis organic oeuvre. The plot is mesmerizing as it unwinds and gives usinsight into the lives of ordinary people that struggle with coming toterms with what counts in their lives; namely love and their loved ones. Italso serves as an example of how same-sex love is nothing out of theordinary, and even though this might now seem somewhat outdated (the bookwas published early 1970s) for the Netherlands at least, this only provesthat through such book as Mulishes we have established something of a morenormal outlook on love in all its forms. ... Read more

Product Description

The trial of Adolf Eichmann began in 1961 under a deceptively simple label, "criminal case 40/61." Hannah Arendt covered the trial for the New Yorker magazine and recorded her observations in Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil. Harry Mulisch was also assigned to cover the trial for a Dutch news weekly. Arendt would later say in her book's preface that Mulisch was one of the few people who shared her views on the character of Eichmann. At the time, Mulisch was a young and little-known writer; in the years since he has since emerged as an author of major international importance, celebrated for such novels as The Assault and The Discovery of Heaven.

Mulisch modestly called his book on case 40/61 a report, and it is certainly that, as he gives firsthand accounts of the trial and its key players and scenes (the defendant's face strangely asymmetric and riddled by tics, his speech absurdly baroque). Eichmann's character comes out in his incessant bureaucratizing and calculating, as well as in his grandiose visions of himself as a Pontius Pilate-like innocent. As Mulisch intersperses his dispatches from Jerusalem with meditative accounts of a divided and ruined Berlin, an eerily rebuilt Warsaw, and a visit to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann becomes as a disturbing and highly personal essay on the Nazi extermination of European Jews and on the human capacity to commit evil ever more efficiently in an age of technological advancement.

Here presented with a foreword by Debórah Dwork and translated for the first time into English, Criminal Case 40/61 provides the reader with an unsettling portrait not only of Eichmann's character but also of technological precision and expertise. It is a landmark of Holocaust writing.

Customer Reviews (1)

Msterful Inquiry Into Nazi Horror
This descriptive and introspective account of the Eichman trial, Nazi history, and what it means is the best book in the area that I have encounted. If it far better than Arendt. Anyone interested in the trial, in evil, in the Nazis, what it all means should read and reflect on what he has seen to write his reflections and analysis. Not rigorous, not designed to prove or persuade,he suggests by example and by inference a powerful way to comprehend the trial, man, the Nazis, the past which allowed it and the future which could produce it again. ... Read more