- 13 Dec, 2025 *
Why is Dutch fiction so completely absent from Anglophone culture?
It’s certainly not that we ignore Dutch culture. Rembrandt, van Gogh, and Vermeer are household names; Leyster and Hals (Frans, at least) are well-known; Carel Fabritius’s work is on the cover of a recent Pulitzer winner in fiction. Then there’s de Stijl: whether or not people could name Mondrian or von Doesburg, there’s plenty of their art that would ring a bell.
It’s not even that we ignore Dutch writing. Spinoza and Erasmus …
- 13 Dec, 2025 *
Why is Dutch fiction so completely absent from Anglophone culture?
It’s certainly not that we ignore Dutch culture. Rembrandt, van Gogh, and Vermeer are household names; Leyster and Hals (Frans, at least) are well-known; Carel Fabritius’s work is on the cover of a recent Pulitzer winner in fiction. Then there’s de Stijl: whether or not people could name Mondrian or von Doesburg, there’s plenty of their art that would ring a bell.
It’s not even that we ignore Dutch writing. Spinoza and Erasmus are canonical, as is Anne Frank. We don’t ignore the history, at least relative to the rest of European history. Many people would know something about William of Orange, or that the Netherlands was an imperial power, or that the histories of Belgium and France and Spain had a lot to do with Dutch history for a while.
Yet Dutch fiction is not merely obscure but, as far as I can tell, a complete cultural blank. My searches suggest that Multatuli’s Max Havelaar is the most famous Dutch novel. I don’t know of anyone I’ve ever met’s having read it, having pretended to read it, or even having heard of it. I don’t remember its ever coming up in a quiz competition, in conversation in a philosophy department, or anywhere else. "Multatuli" is a fairly memorable pen name, yet I can’t remember ever having encoutered it (outside my own searches). LLMs are telling me all about Louis Couperus, Nescio, and The Garden Where the Brass Band Played, and it’s all utterly new to me.
Is there another example of a major genre that is so utterly absent relative to the fame of adjacent ones? Am I missing something? What is going on here?
(By the way, I started Multatuli’s Max Havelaar and didn’t get far, but I was pretty tired at the time. Perhaps I should give it another shot.)