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| | Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Profile: Harry Mulisch |
 | | Mulisch is most successful, he argues, "when he is purely novelistic", and eschews the tendency towards what Binding calls "cerebral masturbation" that can characterise some of the later writing. |
 | | Binding thinks Mulisch is "at his strongest when most concentrated", and this novel's focus on an old man's relationship with his sister and with his troubled past is certainly that. |
 | | Mulisch's own experiences of the theatre came not only as a critic but also in more idealistic circumstances, as the co-author, with the Flemish writer Hugo Claus, of the libretto for a communist-inflected version of Don Giovanni, Reconstructie (Reconstruction, with music by a collective of Dutch composers). |
| books.guardian.co.uk /departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,1095511,00.html (3856 words) |
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