The Ascent
A house can have many secrets
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
The dazzling new novel by Stefan Hertmans, author of the modern classic War and Turpentine.
'Magnificent' Philippe Sands
'Powerful and humane' Observer
'An utterly masterly book' Jonathan Coe
In 1979, Stefan Hertmans fell in love with a dilapidated old house in Ghent, Belgium, which he restored to become his peaceful sanctuary. Now, all these years later, he learns that a bust of Hitler once sat on the mantelpiece, and a war criminal and his family relaxed in its rooms.
This shocking discovery sends Hertmans off to the archives, to uncover the secrets of the house and to reimagine this man's life and expose the atrocities he's responsible for. We see Willem Verhulst as a weak, narcissistic man who climbed high in the ranks of the SS; a fascinating case study for the cruel and perverse mentality of the Nazis.
The Ascent portrays the deep tragedy of Flemish collaboration during the Second World War, as Hertmans masterfully brings history and the house to life, imagining individual lives to tell the greater European story.
Translated from the Dutch by David McKay
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Flemish Belgian writer Hertmans (The Convert) delivers a thoughtful and unflinching narrative in which he imagines the life of his Ghent home's previous owner, who was an SS officer. Hertmans purchased the mildew-covered house as a young man in 1979. In 2000, he discovered it was formerly occupied by Willem Verhulst and his family. Recreating the lives of the Verhulst family during the grisly period of Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1945 and beyond, Hertmans chronicles how Willem becomes a high-ranking Nazi informant, traces his exploits as a Flemish nationalist rabble rouser after WWII, and explores his romantic attachments—particularly to his Jewish first wife, Elsa, who died in 1926, and with whom he requested to be buried. The most fascinating character is Mientje, Verhulst's second wife and the mother of his children, who despises the SS, but loves her husband, despite his affair with devoted Nazi Griet, whom he marries after Mientje's death. Hertmans adds nuance by drawing on interviews with Verhulst's daughters Letta and Suzanne, now in their 80s, and the memoirs of Verhulst's son, Adriaan, who was Hertmans's history professor in the 1970s. Images of Elsa's death certificate and other documents, along with excerpts from various letters and journals, convey the depth of the author's immersion. In Hertmans's hands, the dusty rooms of history come alive.
