The other side
By: Marga Minco ; translated from the Dutch by Ruth Levitt.
Contributors: Levitt, Ruth, 1950-
Series: UNESCO collection of representative works.
Publisher: P. Owen; UNESCO Publishing; U.S. Distributor, Dufour Editions
Published: 1994
Place of publication: London; Paris; Chester Springs, Pa
Language: eng
Number of pages: 118
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945 -- Netherlands -- Fiction.; Netherlands -- History -- German occupation, 1940-1945 -- Fiction.
Description: This is the first collection of stories by the best-selling Dutch writer Marga Minco to appear in English.

In several of these, the German Occupation of Holland is relived in the post-war period through a series of vivid vignettes. Others evoke childhood anxieties and social embarrassment, the wish-fulfillment of a spinster and romantic reverie of a young married woman. A girl makes a desperate last attempt to save her parents from transportation to a concentration camp; a Jewish wedding takes place on the eve of the Nazi Diaspora; a neighbour betrays his wartime affiliation by whistling a tell-tale tune.

There is a taut episode of shoplifting and portrayal of a patient who suspects she has cancer. Marga Minco has a masterful, subtle talent for projecting the human predicament with telling understatement. Her stories, like her novels, are poignant and compassionate yet never mawkish, and the observation is always sharp.