Country of Origin is an exploration of self, an autobiographical work which, though based on the life of the writer, journalist and critic Edgar du Perron, has as its main character Arthur Ducroo. It also a novel about writing. As Ducroo/Du Perron puts it in his journal ‘This exercise in honesty is rather disappointing to me now that I reread it all. I was not able to escape the puzzling principle which turns every «I» into a character as soon as it is used in a story.’


There are many aspects to this complex narrative which is set in and around Paris in the 1930s. It reveals its own genesis in journal-like chapters in which Ducroo recounts his meetings with writers and intellectuals, including ‘Héverlé’, a portrait of French author André Malraux. They discuss European politics, particularly Communism in Russia and National Socialism in Germany. Wijdenes, a Dutch intellectual visiting Ducroo is keenly aware of the tenets and expansionist ambitions of National Socialism and even in 1933 is confronting the prospect of life under a dictatorship: ‘they will kill me or put me in a concentration camp unless I emigrate’. Du Perron’s colleague Menno ter Braak, on whom this character is based, had another way out: he was to commit suicide in 1940.


Ducroo, who in the course of the book must confront many painful episodes begins at the beginning with his earliest memories of his childhood in the former Dutch colony which is now Indonesia. The contrast between this distant world which is so powerfully evoked, and the threatening world of the writer’s present, lend it a magical atmosphere. But gradually, and inevitably, as the book progresses the two worlds move closer to one another. Belgium replaces Indonesia when the parents retire, and Ducroo embarks on an unhappy marriage.


By the time he starts writing, Ducroo has left his wife and child and has recaptured some of his lost happiness through the figure of Jane whom he regards as his destiny — ‘all roads of memory lead to her’ and this is why he sets out to create this account of his former self. It is a kind of homage to Jane.

There were other evenings which my parents spent by the ocean, that is, in the front yard, on a tile patio they had had made in the sand. When the weather was nice, they had their rattan chairs placed there. I was sometimes allowed to sit with them if it wasn’t too late. My father’s presence kept me from feeling at ease most of the time. Our chairs were set very close to the fence; the beach was right in front of us, and past that, the sea, which was deep blue at sundown and black at night, with an occasional light glowing from a fisherman’s prao. The bay opened up abruptly in front of us. To the left there was a short peninsula — in reality, several huge rocks with an island at the end, close to the mouth of the Tjiletuh; to the right the mountain range, whose darkness stood out against the evening sky. From around that range came the praos that brought us our mail. The sunsets were sometimes breathtaking. At night the silence gave the impression of complete rest, detachment, eternity. My parents sometimes commented to each other on how beautiful it was, but did I as a child appreciate, even instinctively, the full value of those hours? I don’t believe so; I think I only made up the memory later. (p. 108-9, tr. Francis Bulhof et al.)