De Kapellekensbaan

IMO a masterpiece. Boon says in the short preamble leading into the main text: "Chapel road which is the book about the childhood of Ondine, who was born in the year 1800-and-something...about her brother valeer-traleer, with his monstrous head wobbling through life this way and that...about her

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father, vapeur, who want to save the world with his godless machine, and about all the things which I can't quite recall now, but which try to draw a rough sketch of the laborious RISE OF SOCIALISM, and of the decline of the bourgeoise which got knocked down by two world wars and collapsed." As Boon relates the story of Ondine and her family, he also mixes in anecdotes of his and his own friends and family's present day events allowing one of them a journalist/poet Johan Janssens to retell a series of Belgian fairytales relating to Reynard the fox and Isengrinus the wolf. These three different threads weave into and out of each other in short sometimes epiphanic chapters. They are very often a hilarious, bitter, sometimes violent bit of social commentary mixing in doses of sarcasm and satire. Extremely anti-authoritarian in content. I have to say that I have never read anything quite like it and found it both profound and at the same time oddly entertaining. A wonderful read. Highly recommended.

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