(Download) "Boeli van Leeuwen's A Stranger on Earth: A Dutch Caribbean Novel (Critical Essay)" by Journal of Caribbean Literatures # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Boeli van Leeuwen's A Stranger on Earth: A Dutch Caribbean Novel (Critical Essay)
- Author : Journal of Caribbean Literatures
- Release Date : January 22, 2009
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 94 KB
Description
Introduction Willem Cornelis Jacobus (Boeli) van Leeuwen, born in Curacao in 1922, received his high school education in the Netherlands. He studied law at the University of Amsterdam, and obtained his PhD in law in 1950. On his return to Curacao, van Leeuwen became Secretary of the island territory of Curacao until his retirement in 1982, after which he provided free legal services, wrote articles on legal issues, and wrote weekly newspaper columns. Van Leeuwen's literary work can be divided into four periods: the forties, in which he wrote prose and poetry; the fifties and sixties, in which his first novels--De Rots der Struikeling (The Stumbling Stone), Een Vreemdeling op Aarde (A Stranger on Earth), and De Eerste Adam (The First Adam) appeared; the seventies, during which a novella, Een vader, een zoon (A father, a son), and brief narratives were written; and the eighties, in which two novels appeared--Schilden van Leem (Shields of Clay) and Het Teken van Jonah (The Sign of Jonah). (The latter was translated into English by Andre Lefevere and published by the Permanent Press in 1995). Van Leeuwen's newspaper columns appeared in Geniale Anarchie (Brilliant Anarchy 1990). His brief narratives were collected in two volumes: De ruine van een kathedraal (The Ruins of a Cathedral 1996), and De Taal van de Aarde (The Language of Earth 1997). Boeli van Leeuwen has been called the Antillian (Gabriel Garcia) Marquez. Indeed, his tales are imbued with a magical realism not unlike that of Marquez. Van Leeuwen uses interlaced narrative forms, building a symphonic counterpoint, and his style is at once lyrical and baroque, with biblical themes. His second novel, A Stranger on Earth, written in 1962, opens with a quotation from Psalm 119: "I am a stranger on earth, hide not Thy commandments from me!" (19-20). This prayer sets the tone for the novel. For when the novel's protagonist, at age eleven, finds his mother in the arms of a lover, he loses his bearings, tumbles from Paradise, and becomes a stranger on earth: