Fall, Bomb, Fall

Seventeen-year-old Karel has been dreaming for something, anything, to shake up his humdrum existence. Soon his wish will be granted​.​ ​​​ When Hitler launches an invasion of the Netherlands,​​ Karel ​is almost killed in an air raid and falls in love for the first time, with a Jewish girl. But the bliss this passion brings is short lived, as his new love and her mother are forced to flee for their lives before the Nazi advance... Inspired partly by Kouwenaar's own experiences under occupation, this rediscovered literary gem tells a heart-breaking, witty and deeply empathetic story of a teenager's coming-of-age at the outbreak of war.



GERRIT KOUWENAAR (1923-2014) was one of the giants of Dutch post-war literature. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands he wrote his first poetry collections and worked for the illegal literary magazine Parade der Profeten. He was arrested for his writing in 1944 and spent six months in prison, after which he went into hiding. Fall, Bomb, Fall, published in 1950 when Kouwenaar was just 23, was his first novel and is partly based on his experiences under Nazi occupation. After the war he first received widespread acclaim as a poet. His work won all the major literature prizes in the Netherlands, including the Dutch Literature Prize for his entire oeuvre. MICHELE HUTCHISON is a British translator from Dutch and French, editor and writer based in the Netherlands. She has translated more than 50 books of various genres. She won the 2019 Vondel Translation Prize for Stage Four by Sander Kollaard and shared both the 2020 International Booker Prize and the 2025 James Tait Black Memorial Prize with Lucas Rijneveld for The Discomfort of Evening and My Heavenly Favouriterespectively. Her translation of The Philosopher, the Dog and the Wedding by Barbara Stok won the inaugural Sophie Castille Award in 2023.



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