de_aanslag rt De Aanslag is geschreven in vijf episodes die plaatsvinden tussen 1945 en 1981. De familie Steenwijk woont in 1945 aan de rand van Haarlem in een van de vier huizen aan een kade, hun huis is genaamd ‘Buitenrust’. Het gezin bestaat uit meneer en mevrouw Steenwijk en de kinderen Peter en Anton. Naast hun huis, woont aan de linkerkant de familie Beumer en aan de rechterkant wonen meneer Korteweg en zijn dochter Karin, maar ook het echtpaar Aarts. De hoofdpersoon is Anton Steenwijk, die in 1945 twaalf jaar oud is. 081228 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Adventures in three_words brings proof that I can't read Dutch just because I can read English and (some) German. Because I understood almost none of this until I turned on automatic translation and saw this was about a book I'd read in CEGEP (in English translation): The Assault by Henry Mulisch. The philosophy of communications prof (the other James Joyce, if this was him, goes by Jim) claimed that the title deliberately misdirects. Like if it's a military assault, it indicates a large-scale operation, and if it's a personal assault, usually the meaning is sexual assault, and you'd expect a female victim. Here it's about a boy whose family is attacked by the German occupiers near the end of WW2; I don't think a bomb was dropped on the house or anything, but if I remember right, people inside are shot - some die. The boy is only slightly injured, and then he's dragged off to spend a night in prison. The later scenes deal with coming to terms with such a traumatizing event, both in understanding why it happened and how it affects him in his older, more ordinary life. By the way, I distrusted Jim Joyce's interpretation of the title as deliberately misleading. For what it's worth, Google Translate translates "De Aanslag" as "The Attack"; I don't know what the connotations would be in Dutch. Then again, the idea of misdirection, of the assault being misdirected, is a major part of the book. 241227 what's it to you? who go blather from