The Dinner
Subtitle: a novel
By: Herman Koch ; translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett
Contributors: Garrett, Sam, translator
Edition: First Paperback Edition (1)
Publisher: Hogarth
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London, England
Language: eng
Translated from: dut
Translation of: Het Diner
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 310
ISBN-13: 9780385346856
Copyright date: 2013
Subjects: Violence; Families; Fiction
Work titles: Diner
Description: It’s a summer’s evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

(back cover)
Notes: "Originally published in the Netherlands as Het Diner by Ambo Anthos, Amsterdam, in 2009"--Title page verso.