My Father’s War     by Adriaan van Dis, Translated by Claire Nicholas White Original title: Indische duinen Original language: Dutch Original year: 1994 Published by New Press Pub. Date: 1996 Format: Hardcover Dimensions: (in inches): 1.11 x 8.58 x 5.84 ISBN: 156584033X List Price: $23.00, £14.62 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £14.62 Buy online from Amazon.com for $23.00 Published by New Press, New York Pub. Date: 1996 Not available for ordering

Click on image to see enlargement

The journalist and novelist Adriaan van Dis is perhaps best known for the literary programme he chairs on Dutch TV. He was born in 1946 in the Netherlands, the child of ex-colonials thrown together by the war that ended the Dutch empire in the East. Today, thanks among other things to the annual Pasar Malam festival in The Hague, the ex-colonial community with its distinctive East Indies lifestyle is far more accepted than it was back in the 1950s and 60s, when there was great pressure to conform to the rigorous norms of Dutch society. But growing up in those years as a member of the second Indies generation has left its mark on Van Dis: though he may look like any other ‘white’ Dutchman, in his heart he feels Indonesian.


My Father’s War, which proved to be one of the Dutch bestsellers of the 1990s, has its basis in Van Dis’ autobiography. It tells the story of his growing up as the son of a father who was deeply traumatized by his experience as a soldier fighting the Japanese. Unable to talk about the pain of the past, the father takes it out on his son, imposing the strictest discipline on the boy and forever training him for his own lost jungle war. It is not until long after the death of this hated father that the son can begin to piece together and understand the story of his life and the terrible secrets of his family.

We were walking with backpacks filled with sand. Back straight, muscles straining and raise that left leg. I want, I’ll win — when the legs hurt, I had to say this ten times. Don’t walk like a girl. A heavy tread makes the legs strong. My father’s soles stamped on the beach.

This was also how he had walked on patrol, he’d had to keep going for days, a wounded soldier on his back. Not allowed to complain, the wounded had to be brought along, otherwise they would become an easy target for the enemy and would betray them. The sand on my back was the wounded man. Stop, let’s add a few more handfulls, wet sand that leaked a trail down your buttocks, sand that scratched the insides of your thighs. Blood, think of the blood of the wounded man on your back.

While they walk in the dunes, past and present are fused and the I is walking again with his father, but now as an adult:

I climbed up the dune. My father leaned on me, and the load became lighter. The wounded man was an angel floating above my back. (p. 255, tr. Claire Nicholas White)