Last Call (Penguin International Writers) [Paperback]

Harry Mulisch (Author), A. Dixon (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Penguin International Writers | Publication Date: February 1, 1990

The hero of this novel, Uli Bouwmeester, is, at 78, the last survivor of a famous Dutch theatrical family. The author is regarded as one of Holland's foremost writers, and his previous book, "The Assault", was made into a film which won an Oscar for best foreign film in 1987.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mulisch has hit full stride as a writer with this latest novel set in contemporary Amsterdam. As in the critically praised The Assault , he is fascinated by the relationship between light and dark, reality and illusion. Uli Bouwmeester, an aging variety artiste, is asked by the director of a playwrights' collective to star in a new play. Hurricane combines a modern drama about the final performance of Pierre de Vries, a famous turn-of-the-century actor, with scenes from The Tempest in which de Vries played Prospero. Uli, in the meantime, is coming to life. To a washed-up actor, a former Nazi collaborator who lives with his elderly sister, the opportunity seems like redemption. As rehearsals progress, Uli becomes so absorbed in his role that the line between theatrical illusion and reality is breached. In one eerie sequence, he literally descends into the bowels of the earth and finds himself in the arms of a transvestite. Mulisch has created a richly textured work, a vivid portrait of modern-day Amsterdam.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Eighty-year-old Uli is acting the part of his life in the Authors' Theater production of Hurricane . Although his career had ended when it was discovered that he had performed for occupation troops and later in Germany, now he has been resurrected to play an aged actor, perhaps himself, and Prospero, the Tempest's sorcerer and star of the play within the play. Even his sister Bert, with whom he lives, gets caught up in the excitement. Thus, two stages of reality are already in place as this imaginative novel opens, but then in come three gambling hoodlums, a love-starved transsexual nurse, and a narrator who comments on everything. While the opening is tedious, once Last Call gets its many realities established, readers are treated to a virtuoso performance. This novel clearly earns Mulisch and Dutch fiction a wider audience. Paul E. Hutchison, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; First Edition edition (February 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140116613
• ISBN-13: 978-0140116618
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,569,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars dazzling! Total theatre; total literature. Magic winding plo, June 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Last Call (Paperback)

Mulisch accomplished here again a dazzling novel. It is theatre withing theatre. In intricate winding of lives, the old actor, Uli Bouwmeester performs his last role of the last role of the older actor de Vries in Shakespeares Tempest, Prospero.As magically as Prospero, the author weaves places, situations, characters, times, events in moving, twirling, engaging tapestry. In reference to Poe's "Narratives ..of Pym" the ending takes the reader through the life transforming and time transcending narratives of the protagonist. The novel unfolds with the clarity of greek tragedy. But even more than these (after all 3000 years of development) it provides rare glimpses of insight into the deeper issues of life.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pretentious and turgid, September 23, 2011

By 

Mr. E. Foggitt "Eric Walters" (Scotland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last Call (Paperback)

This is a somewhat over-complicated novel revealing the flawed and somewhat unappealing central character through the story-line. The theatrical setting is well defined and several of the characters - Willem (Uli) himself and Berta his sister for instance - are well-drawn.
But Harry Mulisch is indeed someone who sometimes needs to hide his high intelligence and he fails to do so in this book. By turns bewildering and banal, the reader is left wondering what exactly is the point which Mulisch is getting at. The skill with which Mulisch executes the five "acts" has little corrolary in content: it's as if it is all form and little substance. Above all, Mulisch fails to make us really care about Uli; the focus shifts to Berta who is revealed as a more sympathetic and interesting figure.
Dixon's appalling translation does Mulisch no favours: some of her howlers must be incomprehensible to non-Dutch speakers ("everyone was hanging on her lips" springs to mind) and her intrusively nit-picking punctuation gives the prose a stop-start feel that makes reading clunky and awkward.
This is a book for Mulisch afficionados only.