The Evenings

Description

'I work in an office. I take cards out of a file. Once I have taken them out, I put them back in again. That is it.' 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. Darkly funny and mesmerising, The Evenings takes the tiny, quotidian triumphs and heartbreaks of our everyday lives and turns them into a work of brilliant wit and profound beauty.

Gerard Reve (1923-2006) is considered one of the greatest post-war Dutch authors, and was also the first openly gay writer in the country's history. A complicated and controversial character, Reve is also hugely popular and critically acclaimed- his 1947 debut The Evenings was chosen as one of the nation's 10 favourite books by the readers of a leading Dutch newspaper while the Society of Dutch Literature ranked it as the Netherlands' best novel of all time.

A masterpiece... What can I say that will put this book where it belongs, in readers' hands and minds?... Reve keeps the reader breathless right through to the grand finale -- Tim Parks Guardian A masterwork of comic pathos... one of the finest studies of youthful malaise ever written... Should cause many readers to revise their opinions of The Catcher in the Rye. In all fairness to Salinger, The Evenings is so much better -- Eileen Battersby Irish Times I was also pleased to see Gerard Reve's funny, poignant debut novel, The Evenings, available in English... it's like BS Johnson and Kafka wandering the crepuscular streets of 1940s Amsterdam together - in a good way -- Alex Preston Observer Books of the Year 2016 Gives Kafka a run for his money... gripping, often very funny... bizarre, enchanting Big Issue Dark masterpiece... It is a powerful story of an alienated young office worker who is cynical about his loving, middle-class parents and friends Observer The funniest, most exhilarating novel about boredom ever written. If The Evenings had appeared in English in the 1950s, it would have become every bit as much a classic as On the Road and The Catcher in the Rye. -- Herman Koch, author of The Dinner This 1947 Dutch novel, considered the Netherlands' greatest in the 20th century... is a savage novel, full of strange, cold laughter Daily Mail Reve's keen eye for absurdity manages to cast the mundane in a new, albeit macabre, light Financial Times The Evenings is packed with the minutiae of life: luckily, the minutiae are fascinating... Reve isn't the kind of novelist to give you a straightforward answer but the journey is quite a ride The Times Fascinates the more you read of it... A fantastic novel -- Andre van Loon Sunday Telegraph The novel is dark, funny, unsettling and lingers vividly in the mind. Hats off to Pushkin Press and the outstanding translator, Sam Garrett, for making this odd, orphaned masterpiece available at last to an English-speaking readership Times Literary Supplement It is now time for a wider audience to discover its weird textures and dark delighs The National Unlike John Williams, Gerard Reve's work was critically acclaimed and sold exceptionally well during his lifetime. But, just like Stoner, The Evenings is brilliantly written, and has a maximum impact on the reader's soul. -- Oscar van Gelderen, the Dutch publisher who rediscovered John Williams' Stoner Gerard Reve's sardonic classic The Evenings is finally translated into English Culturetrip This book, an important classic in the Netherlands and long, long overdue in English, is as funny as it is peculiar. Reve really deserves more attention in the Anglophone world -- Lydia Davis, winner of the Man Booker International Prize