De Avonden

The Evenings, a winter's tale

Cover of the first edition of De avonden. Gerard Reve used the pseudonym Simon van het Reve for this edition.
Author	Gerard Reve
Original title	De avonden, een winterverhaal
Language	Dutch
Publisher	De Bezige Bij
Publication date	1947
Media type	Print
ISBN	978-90-234-5573-8
OCLC	35952069
Dewey Decimal	839.3
LC Class	PT5881.28.E9 A95 1972

De avonden (The evenings), full title De avonden: een winterverhaal, is a 1947 novel by Gerard Reve which was his debut novel. Reve wrote the book under the pseudonym Simon van het Reve. It was released on 1 November 1947.

De avonden describes ten evenings out of the life of the 23-year-old office clerk Frits van Egters. The book is partitioned into 10 chapters, of which each describes an evening between 22 and 31 December 1946.

The novel was written very shortly after World War II. Though the war itself is hardly mentioned, the story gives, by describing an indidivual's experiences, a detailed description of contemporary post-war society which was marked by fear, boredom and loneliness.

Adaptations

In 1988, a film adaptation was made. In a 2002 poll, members of the Society for Dutch Literature ranked De Avonden first among works since 1900 in the Dutch canon.^[1]

In 2007 De avonden was named as one of the Top 10 Dutch language novels of all time by readers of the newspaper NRC Handelsblad.^[2]

The novel was adapted into a comic book by Dick Matena.^[3]

The novel was translated into English in 2016 by Sam Garrett.^[4]

Literature

• S.Hubregtse (1989): Gerard Reve, De avonden. In: Lexicon van literaire werken (Dutch).
• E. Kummer & H. Verhaar (1976): Over De avonden van Gerard Kornelis van het Reve (Dutch)

References