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Cover of The Assault by Harry Mulisch

The Assault

Harry Mulisch

  • 192 pages · about 3 hours
  • First published 1982
  • 30 editions
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1 About this book

The Assault (original title in Dutch: De aanslag) is a 1982 novel by Dutch author Harry Mulisch. Random House published an English translation by Claire Nicolas White in 1985. It covers 35 years in the life of the lone survivor of a night in Haarlem during World War II when the Nazi occupation forces, finding a Dutch collaborator murdered, retaliate by killing most of the family in front of whose home the body was found.

According to the New York Times, this novel "made his reputation at home and abroad". It was translated into dozens of languages and immediately adapted into a film of the same name that won the 1986 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Good for readers who want: historical fiction and literary fiction.

  • Historical fiction
  • Literary fiction
  • Suspense & Thriller
  • Espionage
  • Thrillers, espionage
  • Netherlands

2 About Harry Mulisch

1927–2010

Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch (Dutch pronunciation:; 29 July 1927 – 30 October 2010) was a Dutch writer. He wrote more than 80 novels, plays, essays, poems, and philosophical reflections. Mulisch's works have been translated into 38 languages. Along with Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard Reve, Mulisch is considered one of the "Great Three" (De Grote Drie) of Dutch postwar literature.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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