During the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt is visited by Dorbeck. Dorbeck is Osewoudt's spitting image in reverse. Henri is blond and beardless, with a high voice; Dorbeck is dark-haired, and his voice deep. Dorbeck gives Osewoudt a series of dangerous assignments: helping British agents and eliminating traitors. But the assassinations get out of hand... The story of Osewoudt's fateful wanderings through a sadistic universe is thrilling. Is Osewoudt hero or villain? Or is he a psychopath, driven by delusions? It is the impossibility of ascertaining whether Osewoudt was on the "right" side or the "wrong" side - the moral issue of the Second World War in a nutshell - that makes Hermans' novel as breathtaking now as when it was written a decade after the war.

Willem Frederik Hermans's lucid and exhilarating WWII masterpiece in a razor-sharp translation by David ColmerA Guardian Angel Recalls is a gripping and diabolical wartime novel by one of the most provocative Dutch writers of the twentieth-century. Alberegt, a frenzied and lovelorn public prosecutor, speeds through Hook of Holland in his black Renault on May 9, 1940 – the eve of the German invasion of the Netherlands. Guiding his every move is a guardian angel. With unflappable patience, the angel flits from the hood of the Renault to the rim of his windswept hat, determined to quell his every anxiety and doubt. The angel's momentary distraction, however, sets off a chain of events that spins a nightmarish web. Alberegt's elusive companion serves both as narrator and meddlesome driver of the plot, though not without the interventions of a rotating cast of devils.

A brooding meditation on violence by a classic post-war Dutch writer who has drawn comparisons to Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut.A mesmerizing, dark meditation on the legacy of war. An interloper and opportunist makes a grand house his own in the chaos of a war-torn countryside, only to find himself involved with occupying forces and enraged locals.