Though Harry Mulisch has been writing prolifically (drama, journalism and poetry, but mainly fiction) since the 1950s and The Discovery of Heaven is in all senses his magnum opus. Monumental in scale and hugely ambitious, it synthesises many of the themes that have preoccupied Mulisch since his debut, incorporates several autobiographical elements and gives a panoramic picture of Dutch political and intellectual life from the 1960s to the late 1980s.


Published in the year of its author’s sixty-fifth birthday, the book consists of sixty-five chapters grouped into four sections with the appropriately apocalyptic titles: ‘The Beginning of the Beginning’, ‘The End of the Beginning’, ‘The Beginning of the End’ and ‘The End of the End’. The main narrative is punctuated by a prologue, epilogue and three intermezzos set in heaven (see the book’s title). The plot revolves around nothing less than the recovery and return to heaven of the tablets of Moses by a divinity dismayed at human hubris and destructiveness.


Heaven’s envoy takes the form of the gifted Quinten Quist, born into a patrician Dutch family but fathered by the brilliant, womanising, tormented, half-Jewish astronomer Max Delius, himself the son of a notorious war criminal. Quinten’s mother Ada, the wife of Max’s bosom friend Onno, a renegade scholar turned politician, is crushed by a falling tree before his birth and never emerges from the resulting coma. The orphan is brought up in the countryside by Max and his maternal grandmother. The earthly action moves, in the space of Onno’s first two decades of life, from the Netherlands to Poland, revolutionary Cuba, Rome and finally Jerusalem.


The Discovery of Heaven — a typically ambiguous title: is heaven the subject or object of the discovery? It is written with enormous panache and the dialogues, particularly the set-piece discussions between Onno and Max, crackle with wit and lightly-worn erudition. It is both a moving celebration of friendship and, especially in its later sections, a compelling adventure yarn orchestrated by a master showman. A film of the novel is currently in production in the Netherlands.

‘Where are you headed?’

‘Are you going towards Amsterdam?’

‘In you get.’

Onno took a step back and surveyed the car disapprovingly. «But under protest!»

‘Please, I beg you,’ said Max in amusement.

Once, with some effort, he had managed to sit — or rather, lie — down, Max put his foot down and the car leaped forward like a racehorse.

‘Nice motor,’ said Onno with an expression that indicated he thought his benefactor was not quite right in the head.

Max burst out laughing. ‘Oh, this is nothing. When I grow up, I shall buy a white open-topped Rolls-Royce, and I’ll sit on the back seat in a white fur coat, with a beautiful woman at the wheel.’

Pulling a wry face, Onno was forced to laugh a little too, and turned his head to one side. He already had the beginnings of a double chin. ‘Why don’t you buy a pram right away?’

Max glanced at him for a moment. They had found each other — this was the moment. Did they both realise it? With those few words a bridge had been built. Max knew he had been seen through by Onno as never before, just as Onno felt understood by Max, because his aggressive irony had not met with resistance, as it invariably did, but with a laugh that had something invulnerable about it. They had recognised each other. A little embarrassed by the situation, they were silent for a few minutes. (p. 23-24, tr. Paul Vincent)