Why a Booktrail?
2000s: The book that Dutch people read before Christmas
The Evenings
What you need to know before your trail
Twenty-three-year-old Frits – office worker, daydreamer, teller of inappropriate jokes – finds life absurd and inexplicable. He lives with his parents, who drive him mad. He has terrible, disturbing dreams of death and destruction. Sometimes he talks to a toy rabbit.
This is the story of ten evenings in Frits’s life at the end of December, as he drinks, smokes, sees friends, aimlessly wanders the gloomy city streets and tries to make sense of the minutes, hours and days that stretch before him.
Locations
Reset- Netherlands - Amsterdam
- A: Rijksmuseum
- B: Vodelpark
- C: Van Gogh Museum
- D: Herengracht
Travel Guide
Hongerwinter – Amsterdam
The story is set in Amsterdam in 1946 and was written a year later. It has themes of boredom and lonliness and depravation. This must be from the Hongerwinter or Winter of Hunger which happened from 1944 – 1945.
Austerity – “Everything is still so hard to get”
When it was over,” Frits went on, “we still had dozens of pounds of wheat, kilos of beans and peas. But it is the fear. That is worst of it all.”
BookTrail Boarding Pass: The Evenings
Destination/location: Amsterdam Author/guide: Gerard Reve Departure Time: 1944
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