Een nieuwer testament by Hella S. Haasse

Haasse was the eldest child of the concert pianist and composer Katharina Diehm Winzenhöhler and Willem Hendrik Haasse, a senior official in the Dutch-Indian colonial administration who worked as a tax investigator. She was active for two more years before old age and finally a brief illness prevented her from continuing to work. Haasse - her nom de plume - described herself in this way in 2005, she was looking back on 60 years of “presence,” during which she had created some 60 works, among them mainly novels, but also plays and literary reflections. Hooft Prize (1983) and the Dutch Literature Prize (Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren, 2004), and her work has been translated into many languages.“Writing is my way of being present”.

Haasse has received several prestigious literary awards, among which the P.C. In 2006 her short stories were brought together in Het tuinhuis (The Garden House). Haasse also published various collections of essays, including Uitgesproken, opgeschreven (Recited, Recorded, 1996) and Zwanen schieten (Shooting Swans, 1998). Her non-historical novels and stories are often about ordinary people who are intensely confronted by their choices and circumstances: De ingewijden (The Insiders, 1957), Huurders en onderhuurders (Tenants and Sub-tenants, 1971), Berichten van het blauwe huis (Messages from the Blue House, 1986), Fenrir (2000) and Sleuteloog (Eye of the Key, 2002). Her work is characterised by an adequate and well thought out vocabulary and a flexible sentence structure. In 1992 she published another novel about her home country, the Dutch East Indies: the highly acclaimed Heren van de thee (The Tea Merchants). Titles such as Het woud der verwachting (In a Dark Wood Wandering, 1949), Een nieuwer testament (Threshold of Fire, 1966) and Mevrouw Bentinck of Onverenigbaarheid van karakter (Mrs Bentinck or Irreconcilable in Character, 1978) have been greatly enjoyed by several generations. As with much of her work, this tale of the friendship between a Dutch and an Indonesian boy has gained the status of a classic in the Netherlands. She made her name three years later with the novella given out to mark the Dutch Book Week, Oeroeg. In 1945 she debuted with a collection of poems, entitled Stroomversnelling (Momentum). She moved to the Netherlands after secondary school.

Haasse (1918 - 2011) was born in Batavia, modern-day Jakarta.

Een nieuwer testament by Hella S. Haasse