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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Edgy enlightenment story,
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This review is from: The Given Day (Paperback)
This is a rare book not only due to small print runs and lack of recent reprints, but because it's unlike anything else Robert van Gulik ever wrote.
Van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries were (and are) extremely popular, and his readers expected him to stick with his delightful, upbeat Tang Dynasty magistrate. The Given Day takes place in van Gulik's present tense and has a traumatized Dutch civil servant for a hero. The critics hated it. But I loved it for showing a different side of Van Guilik, and so does his biographer, Janwillem van de Wettering, who writes a wonderful postscript to the novel. Van Gulik published The Given Day privately in 1964, three years before he died, and life and death are its themes. Johan Hendriks has lost two wives and a child and just barely survived a Japanese prison camp in World War II. We meet him back in Amsterdam, a physical and psychological wreck, blaming himself for his loses and still reliving the torture he experienced at the hands of Captain Uyeda. This highly original villain interrupts his painful interrogations by discussing spiritual conundrums with Hendriks. The koan that Captain Uyeda failed to solve while studying Zen in Kyoto troubles him still, and Hendriks inherits it. For such an introspective novel, the plot is action packed, weirdly peppered with lust and violence. Hendriks seems destined to meet with particularly odd bad guys, not just in the past but in the present, before he makes peace with existence. Van Gulik shows an edgy narrative style in this book that's a complete departure from Judge Dee. He plays with time, place and personalities. He writes shocking lines, as when Uyeda remarks, "Severe torture is an inducement to meditation, sometimes." The story can be seen as either Zen or Christian or both, but is most of all van Gulik's own perverse brand of truth-seeking. I found out about this book in van de Wettering's biography of van Gulik. I highly recommend both. Van Gulik the man is every bit as fascinating as his books.
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