The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen
A bestseller translated into over 30 languages. A novel that reads like nonfiction. First published in Dutch in 2014, English translation published in 2016.
The excerpt here is from page 76, part of the entry for Tuesday, February 26. The diary is for 2013, January 1 through December 31, running from page 1 through page 378. (I like books where the text starts on page 1.)
Here is Hendrick Groen’s first entry, a short one, on January 1: “Another year, and I still don’t like old people. Their walker shuffle, their unreasonable impatience, their endless complaints, their tea and cookies, their bellyaching.
Me? I am eighty-three years old.”
[Flickr seems to be unable to indent text lines in descriptions.]
On the back of the book jacket are three snippets from reviews, including this from the Sunday Telegraph: “Amusing [and] wickedly accurate ... I was constantly put in mind of Ken Kesey’s madhouse tale One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, another comi-tragedy concerning the tyranny of institutions of the unwanted. Enjoy Goen’s light touch but do not be fooled by it ... The Secret Diary is a handbook of resistance for our time. Five stars.”
The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen
A bestseller translated into over 30 languages. A novel that reads like nonfiction. First published in Dutch in 2014, English translation published in 2016.
The excerpt here is from page 76, part of the entry for Tuesday, February 26. The diary is for 2013, January 1 through December 31, running from page 1 through page 378. (I like books where the text starts on page 1.)
Here is Hendrick Groen’s first entry, a short one, on January 1: “Another year, and I still don’t like old people. Their walker shuffle, their unreasonable impatience, their endless complaints, their tea and cookies, their bellyaching.
Me? I am eighty-three years old.”
[Flickr seems to be unable to indent text lines in descriptions.]
On the back of the book jacket are three snippets from reviews, including this from the Sunday Telegraph: “Amusing [and] wickedly accurate ... I was constantly put in mind of Ken Kesey’s madhouse tale One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, another comi-tragedy concerning the tyranny of institutions of the unwanted. Enjoy Goen’s light touch but do not be fooled by it ... The Secret Diary is a handbook of resistance for our time. Five stars.”