DUTCH COMPLACENCY, Dutch provincialism, Dutch reluctance to face the big questions in life: the Dutch novelist Willem Frederik Hermans disliked many things about his native land.

As a (non-Dutch) character observes in Beyond Sleep: “If an entire population specialises, generation upon generation, in surviving in a country that is strictly speaking the domain of fish, then those people will end up inventing a special philosophy of their own, in which the human dimension is totally lacking! A philosophy based entirely on self-preservation. A world view that amounts to keeping dry and making sure there’s nothing fishy going on!” The Dutchman on the receiving end of this dismissive tirade is ready with a response, but he is daunted by the thought of having to say it all in German, the language in which he and his Norwegian interlocutor have chosen, of necessity, to converse. So he shuts up. There is much discussion in Beyond Sleep of the frustrations of speaking a language that no one else can be bothered to learn. More than a decade after Hermans’s death, this new translation of a novel published in 1966 would seem to be the only book of his available in English.

Alfred Issendorf, anti-hero of Beyond Sleep, was not quite 7 when his father, a botanist, fell to his death. Alfred’s life since then has been directed towards the fulfilment of his father’s thwarted promise. Now a 25-year-old geologist, he is determined to make his name.

On the advice of his university tutor in Amsterdam, Alfred has embarked on an expedition to Lapland. His aim is to find evidence for his professor’s theory that the distinctive round holes in that barren landscape were made not by ice, as is commonly thought, but by meteorites.

Even before the expedition begins, Alfred’s quest to obtain a vital set of aerial photographs has foundered in a Kafkaesque comedy of setbacks and misunderstandings.

The terrain becomes steadily more hostile. Mosquitoes feast on every inch of exposed flesh. The midnight sun is relentless. Alfred injures his leg, gets wet, gets lost. Essential supplies run low.

Stuck in their tents as the rain pours down, Alfred and his Norwegian companions talk of life, death, God and meteors: big questions of the kind good Dutchmen avoid. The grim absurdity is redeemed by the sheer oddity of narrative perspective that comes from Alfred’s lack of self-know-ledge, and his ploddingly literal approach to all he sees and does. Beyond Sleep is a welcome if belated introduction to an original and challenging voice in modern European literature.

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