Title: The other side
First published: 1994
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.
Subjects: Fiction, World War, 1939-1945, History, Netherlands, fiction, Netherlands, history, german occupation, 1940-1945, Fiction, historical, general
Places: Netherlands
Time periods: German occupation, 1940-1945
LC classification: PT5881.23.I52 A813 1994