page_title: The Sorrow of Belgium
section_title: Main characters
hierarchical_section_title: The Sorrow of Belgium / Main characters
caption_attribution_description: English: Hugo Claus - Belgium writer.
context_page_description: The Sorrow of Belgium is a 1983 novel by the Belgian author Hugo Claus. The book, widely considered Claus's most important work and "the most important Dutch-language novel of the twentieth century", is a bildungsroman which explores themes around politics and growing up in Flanders around World War II. It has been described as "one of the great novels of postwar Europe".
  The Sorrow of Belgium explores the childhood and youth of Louis Seynaeve, a Flemish schoolboy living in the region of Kortrijk during World War II when Belgium was under German occupation. The novel itself is a bildungsroman formed from two sections:
  "The Sorrow"; 27 numbered chapters with titles
  "of Belgium"; text not divided in chapters.
  The work was first published in an English translation by Arnold J. Pomerans in 1994. It was also made into a mini-series the same year.
context_section_description: Louis Seynaeve is the protagonist, a Belgian youth who is an alter ego of the author
  Staf Seynaeve is Louis' father, a printer and a Flemish nationalist with pro-Nazi sympathies.
  Clarence Seynaeve-Bossuyt is Louis' mother. She will work for a German company during the war.
  Gerard Vlieghe is Louis' best friend at the boarding school. He will join NSJV, a Belgian movement related to the Hitlerjugend.
  Rebekka Cosijns is a girlfriend of Louis. His parents forbid him to play with her because she's a gipsy.
  Evariste de Launey is a Jesuit and a teacher of Louis. He will work for the Belgian resistance.
  Byttebier is a classmate, known as the "Apostle Barnabas".
  Dondeyne is a classmate, known as "Apostle Matthias". His younger brother is called René.
caption: Hugo Claus, pictured in 1984
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