De bende van Jan de Lichte / De zoon van Jan de Lichte by Louis Paul Boon

With this title Boon emerged for the first time as an important innovator of the novel. His experiences during the War and mostly the Occupation are the subject of Boon's fourth book, My Little War (1947, translation 2010 by Paul Vincent, Dalkey Archive Press), now widely regarded as a major masterpiece of Dutch literature of World War II. However, he was captured as a prisoner of war on the first day and eventually sent home, after a few weeks in a prisoner camp. World War IIĪt the onset of World War II Boon was a soldier in a division stationed near the village of Veldwezelt, in order to defend the Albert Canal. Yet as the 1940s took off, he matured and wrote his first published works in a row, including a novel based upon the life of Vincent van Gogh, Abel Gholarts (1944, not available in translation). During the 1930s he tried time and again to write something worthwhile, but in vain. As a literary author Boon was not an early bloomer. During evenings and weekends he studied art at the Aalsterse Academie voor Schone Kunsten but soon had to abandon his studies due to lack of funds. Boon left school at age 16 to work for his father as a carriage painter. When he was very young Boon witnessed the shooting of a prisoner by a German soldier, otherwise the First World War, which ended when Boon was only six years old, left little traces in his writings. He was born Lodewijk Paul Aalbrecht Boon in Aalst, Belgium to a working-class family.

De bende van Jan de Lichte / De zoon van Jan de Lichte by Louis Paul Boon