Eline Vere: A Novel of the Hague

"There are many chapters in Inevitable ... which mark the book as an exquisite example of the fictionists art. The author's touch is always delicate and sure in handling the lights and shades of thought and emotion. ... There is not a poorly drawn character among the score or so in the book"
--"T [...]
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"There are many chapters in Inevitable ... which mark the book as an exquisite example of the fictionists art. The author's touch is always delicate and sure in handling the lights and shades of thought and emotion. ... There is not a poorly drawn character among the score or so in the book"
--"The New York Times Book Review"
Louis Couperus, widely considered one of the greatest Dutch novelists, gained prominence in 1889 with this psychological novel inspired Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, and Leo Tolstoy. Eline, withdrawn and subject to depression, accepts the marriage proposal of a family friend, only to break off the engagement, convinced that her sickly but charismatic cousin Vincent is in love with her. Vincent drifts in other directions. She travels, dreams, and deteriorates. Moving back to the Hague, she lives alone in a hotel, where, during a nervous crisis, she takes what may or may not be an accidental overdose. Award-winning translator Ina Rilke's new translation of this masterpiece will be a literary event.
Louis Couperus (1863-1923) spent much of his youth in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and many of his novels and stories are set either there or in The Hague, where he was born, though his work also contains glimpses of Italy, Africa, and China, where he traveled extensively. He gained prominence in 1889 with Eline Vere. His novels The Hidden Force, Old People and the Things That Pass, Ecstasy, and Inevitable are also celebrated. Couperus was the greatest Dutch novelist of his generation.