Amsterdam Stories

J. H. F. Gronloh was a successful Dutch businessman, executive
of the Holland-Bombay Trading Company and father of
four, with a secret life: under the pseudonym Nescio (Latin for
"I don't know"), he wrote a series of short stories that went
unrecognized at the time but that are now w [...]
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J. H. F. Gronloh was a successful Dutch businessman, executive
of the Holland-Bombay Trading Company and father of
four, with a secret life: under the pseudonym Nescio (Latin for
"I don't know"), he wrote a series of short stories that went
unrecognized at the time but that are now widely considered
the best prose ever written in Dutch.
Nescio's stories look back on the enthusiasms of youth with
an achingly beautiful melancholy comparable to the work of
Alain-Fournier and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He writes of young
dreams from the perspective of adult resignation, but reinhabits
youthful ambition and adventure so fully that the later
perspective is the one thrown into doubt--and with language
as fresh as when it was written a century ago. His last long
story, written and set during World War II, is a remarkable
evocation of the Netherlands in wartime and a hymn to our
capacity to take refuge in memory and imagination.
This is great literature--capturing the Dutch landscape and
scenes of Amsterdam with a remarkable poetry, and expressing
the spirit of the country of businessmen and van Gogh,
merchants and visionaries. This first translation of Nescio into
English--all the major works and a broad selection of his
shorter stories--is a literary event.