godverdomse dagen op een godverdomse bol - dimitri verhulst
This was the last book I read in 2008 and the first one I finished in 2009. That's an accident, of course, but it seems rather, I don't know, significant maybe. Godverdomse dagen op een godverdomse bol is huge and significant book, not so much in girth (it's a mere 186 (not very full) pages long), but certainly in subject matter and in impact.
It describes the whole of human history, from the moment the first preprotomammal crawled out of the ocean, up to the Atomic Bomb. Quite ambitious. But it works, and it works beautifully, and touchingly, if hugely depressing, since what people have done to each other over the ages is, let's face it, rather depressing, and Verhulst knows how to work that and prod it and repeat it and then he hammers it all home for good measure.
And he does this in such beautiful, creative, playful language, a gorgeous Flemish that reads like poetry and that's really at its best when he reads the stuff aloud himself.
I'm sure I'll be thinking about this book for quite a while.
03-01-2009
