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Zusatztext “Forceful and engrossing . . . Mysteries! strange alliances and drama abound in this singular coming-of-age tale.” – The New York Times Book Review “Rich and fully satisfying. . . . [An] exhilarating success.” – The Washington Post Book World “From the very beginning! the beautiful! self-effacing language of the novel engages us. That! along with Ruebsamen’s passion and intelligence! grips the reader until the end of the novel! and after.” – Commonweal “Absolutely enchanting . . . exotic! mysterious! magical but psychologically realistic.” – The Times (London) Informationen zum Autor Helga Ruebsamen was born in 1934 in Jakarta, Indonesia, and spent her early childhood on Java. In 1939 her family traveled to Europe, and they stayed in Holland throughout the war. She worked as a journalist for Het Vaderland , a newspaper in The Hague, before becoming a freelance writer. She is the author of five collections of short stories and two previous novels. The Song and the Truth is her first work to be published in English. Klappentext Set against the backdrop of the Dutch East Indies and Nazi-occupied Holland! this luminous novel delivers epic themes filtered through the rich imagination of a young girl. Living with her parents on the island of Java in the late 1930s! five-year-old Lulu moves in a magical world of daydreams and island myths. But when one day Lulu innocently describes a scene she stumbled across late one night! the repercussions are felt for many years and across two continents. Called from the sumptuous tropics back to The Hague! with stops in Marseilles! Paris! and London along the way! Lulu's family is soon forced into hiding as the war approaches. A moving account of a childhood overwhelmed by history! The Song and the Truth is a profound meditation on how the paradox of memory-at once intransigent and elusive-shapes our lives. One Every day, as soon as the sun went down, tiny lizards climbed up the walls of our veranda. "Look, the tjitjaks are here." The night people lit the lamps, in the rooms and on the veranda. The ladies who'd come to tea took their leave and went home. The day was over, and night was beginning. My mother accompanied her guests as far as the waringin tree and waved to the visitors and their children as they left. I stood on the veranda listening to the sounds coming from the Lembang road. I could hear the cars driving uphill, up the mountain, where the sun was already asleep in the volcano. Or hear them driving downhill, to Bandung, the town where the zoo was and my father's clinic. There were often parties in town, and the cars drove faster then. My mother came back; I could hear her singing before I saw her. She didn't hurry, she sauntered along, stopping now and then, so that the bright spot she formed in the darkness grew larger only very slowly. When it reached the point where I could make out more than the color of her dress, I could also see her platinum blond curls and even her bright eyes. By then she was so close that she could touch me. "Well, we've got the veranda to ourselves again," said Mummy. She stretched out on the settee and beckoned to me. "All those visitors," she sighed, "and never anyone you can talk to." The tjitjaks had found their places. On the ceiling they had frozen into wooden ornaments, but they pounced like greased lightning on any insects that strayed close to them. The lamps burned in the rooms and on the veranda, so that night could not descend on us. The night abolished the distinction between inside and outside. At night it was cool and dark everywhere. Everything was safe--people, animals, and plants--beneath a dark dome as large as the world. When the sky, the earth, and the water had attained the same dark hue, the toké arrived. I waited for the toké e...
