Following Story (Harvest in Translation) [Hardcover]

Cees Nooteboom (Author), Ina Rilke (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1996 | Series: Harvest in Translation

Herman Mussert went to bed last night in Amsterdam and wakes in Lisbon in a hotel room where he slept with another man’s wife more than twenty years ago. Winner of the European Literary Prize for Best Novel, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Translated by Ina Rilke. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sardonic, erudite bachelor Herman Mussert, a classics scholar and writer of travel guides, goes to bed one night in his Amsterdam flat but inexplicably wakes up in a Lisbon hotel. He slowly realizes that this is the very room where he had an affair with married biology teacher Maria Zeinstra 20 years before. Is he dreaming or dead or time traveling? So begins Dutch novelist Nooteboom's (The Knight Has Died) semi-surreal, elegantly lyrical, enchanting but baffling postmodernist fable, winner of the 1993 European Literary Prize. Strewn with classical allusions and archetypal images in collision with the modern world, Mussert's dreamlike narration is a haunting meditation on the inescapable reality of death, the blindness of love, the vanity of human endeavor and the possible existence of an immortal soul. These themes are explored as the narrator reenacts his tawdry affair and embarks on a voyage with a motley crew-an astronomer/captain, a Benedictine priest, an exiled Chinese scholar, a Third World journalist and an elusive mystery woman-sailing up the Amazon.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Nooteboom (The Knight Who Died, LJ 6/1/90) is one of The Netherlands' premier writers. In his incomparable style he has written a novella about a man traveling through space who tells a story about traveling through time. Herman Mussert, a Latin and Greek teacher, doesn't believe in the self but in a soul that undergoes endless transformations of love and death. He is nevertheless surprised when he goes to bed in Amsterdam and wakes up in Lisbon, with Portuguese money in his wallet. We follow Mussert's soul as it moves on, eventually leaving life and finding meaning: endless death, endless transformations, endless love. Herman has been trapped in the mundane, but at last he escapes. This novel is all imagination, dream desire, language, and reflection. Recommended for literary fiction collections.
Gene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: San Val (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141770618X
• ISBN-13: 978-1417706181
• Shipping Information: View shipping rates and policies
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,423,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The journey to the eternity, December 9, 2000

By 

"irmam" (Slovenia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Following Story (Paperback)

The story starts few minutes before death of Herman Mussert, a teacher of classical languages, and ends few minutes after his death. In this short period of time we learn all the important events of his life. The story is just like a journey to the eternity. It begins in Amsterdam, where Herman is dying of heart attack. It continues in Portugal, where he wakes up and remembers the things happened here years ago that were very important for all his life. The last part of the journey is a journey with the ship over the ocean to the origin of the river Amazon. This is the last part of the journey and it is where the eternity begins.

This is also a story of two men and two women, or three teachers and one student. This is a story of love and jealousy or love and revenge. The very important thing in this book is a relationship between materialistic world of science with all his natural principals, and spirituality. The last moments of life are just the right ones to think about the connection between them.

The novel is very short. In some way, it is cyclic and written in such a way that at the end the reader has a feeling that the story is beginning not ending. But there is already the time for a following story - the story of the next traveller on the journey to the eternity.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterpiece of modern literature, January 3, 2000

By 

Andrew Karbovsky - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Following Story (Hardcover)

I've come across this book quite inadvertently (or serendipitously taking into account the results)attracted by its European Literary Prize. But from the first page I was fascinated by this literary masterpiece of previously unknown (for me) author. It is a love story dressed in apparel of modern psychology and philosophy, overwhelming beautiful and devastatingly sad, absolutely devoided of schmaltz. This incredibly succinct book includes stupendous magnitude of contemplations and reflections, metaphors and symbols, images and emotions. Its composition is perfect - from humorous observations of ostentatious misanthrope nonplussed by extraordinary awaking in a memorable place to the pinnacle of genuine understanding of human tragedy of classical scope where jealousy and vengeance generate distorted passion and destroy real love. Its language is exquisite, the language of the sincere poet. It is the book which you'll want to reread when the last phrase still reverberates in your mind. It is one of the best books I've ever read, chef d'oeuvre of intelligent, perspicacious and generous author.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Following Story, December 26, 2004

By 

Damian Kelleher (Brisbane, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Following Story (Paperback)

Herman Musset, a quiet, introverted teacher of Latin and Greek, and who spends all of his time reading. He writes travel guides under the name of Dr Strabo, and calls it 'a moronic activity whereby I earn my living'. In his spare time - when he is not reading - he translates Ovid's Metamorphosis, a translation he wants nobody to see because, 'Our modern languages are altogether too wordy...the traffic jam, the jumble of words, blathering chaos.'

He falls asleep one night in his home in Amsterdam, and awakens in Lisbon, twenty years previous. He is unsure if he is dead, or has been transported back through time, or whether he is hallucinating. Or, maybe, some other possibility that he cannot imagine. All he knows is that the room he woke up in, the room in Lisbon, is the very same place where he slept with another man's wife.

In waking up in this room, he remembers the actions of all those years ago and the people that were affected. Lisa d'India, a talented, beautiful student, he remembers the best. She was loved by all for her intelligence, loved by Herman for the ideal she represented. He admired her, appreciated her skill with Greek, but he did not love her in the carnal sense, the way every else seemed to. For Herman, sexual love '[has] more to do with the animal kingdom than with human beings, who concern themselves with the less tangible aspects of existence.'

Lisa d'India is loved, most especially, by Arend Herfst, a poet and basketball teacher. He begins a relationship with the girl, and it seems that everyone but Herman is aware of this. Arend's wife, Maria Zeinstra, begins an affair with Herman, an affair of revenge, not love or lust, and Herman is completely unaware of this fact. Happily, the plot never moves into confusing betrayals or empty, 'romantic' gestures. Instead, we follow the events through the absent-minded, bewildered eyes of Herman. His affair with Maria Zeinstra, an affair that he did not plan and did not really want, is somewhat beyond his talents in people interaction. He does not know how to handle her, and luckily, does not have to. Herman is used merely as a piece in the strategy game that husband and wife are playing. Yet, Maria's relationship with Herman is not malicious, as far as we can tell, and is oftentimes quite gentle.

The clandestine cum love story plot is one that can easily be ignored, and indeed is for most of the novel. The true focus is Herman. He is an amazing character, a learned, intelligent, gentle man, who is 'as ugly as Socrates'. He quotes Ovid, Tacitus and Shakespeare in his meandering confessions, he considers this philosophy or that author, wonders about the state of art and culture, comments on everything with a wry wink to the reader. Herman is a man who enjoys words more than anything else in this world, he enjoys reading them and - while he considers his own talents to be of a poor quality, and useless when compared to the Latin and Greek greats - he loves writing down his thoughts. Through the sarcasm and the negativity towards popular culture, there is a timid yet kind man who just wants to love his books in peace.

An explanation for Herman's sleeping in Amsterdam and awakening in Lisbon twenty years earlier is given, but I will not reveal it. Towards the end of the novel, when Herman has relived the most vivid, alive experience of his life, when he has finished recounting an episode when the real world intrudes on his careful, closed existence of words and rhyme, he boards a ship, travelling with six other people, swapping dream-like stories of time and reality. In this section, the sardonic, witty narrator - Herman - all but disappears, replaced with a lazily beautiful chronicler of events of the mind. The transition is seamless and works very well, building up a sort of confused, dreamy tension until the last two amazing pages, and then the final, perfect sentence when the cloud of unanswered questions are blown away and we are left with a brilliant clarity and understanding.