Ten winter evenings in postwar Amsterdam. Nothing happens, which is exactly the point.

It caused a minor scandal on publication in 1946—too bleak, too trivial, too honest about what postwar life actually felt like when the grand narratives dropped away. It still reads that way. A novel of boredom that refuses to let boredom be neutral.

Frits van Egters moves through a narrow circuit—home, visits, small talk, radio, bed—conversations stall, jokes land badly, silences stretch. The war has ended, but whatever comes after it hasn’t quite begun. Time feels used up, or misallocated. Reve catalogues the banal with such hostility it becomes almost as though a surgery is being performed on oneself as you read, and you are forced to watch. 

Beneath the repetition is a low, persistent dread: of meaninglessness, of decay, of being trapped inside a life that never properly starts. Frits fills that space with nervous humour, petty cruelty, and a running commentary that edges toward something like existential panic. Well worth the time, despite not sounding as such, truly memorable read. 

Pushkin Press paperback (2017 edition, Sam Garrett translation). Very good condition. Light handling wear, clean throughout, no markings.