Cambridge, Budapest, New York, Zurich, The Hague, Tel Aviv, the South Downs of England: the narrator has travelled everywhere. He has observed some of the major upheavals of the century

In January 1935, Rob leaves Holland for Cape Town, a young man thirsting for adventure and wanting above all to leave his family’s suffocating hold on him behind.

One summer’s afternoon in 1981, a factory owner, Christiaan Dudok, is found dead in his study having taken his own life. He has left no suicide note, but on his desk is a newspaper from 2 April 1942, reporting on the bombing of the north German town of Lübeck.

June 1941. Dutch diplomat Oscar Verschuur has been posted to neutral Switzerland. His family is spread across Europe. His wife Kate works as a nurse in London and their daughter Emma is living in Berlin with her husband Carl, a ‘good’ German who works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Since the liberation of the Netherlands, Emma Verweij has been living in Rotterdam, in a street which became a stronghold of friendships for its inhabitants during the Second World War.

In The Age of Dudok the five novels of Otto de Kat are collected. The reader suddenly realises that the main characters of the novels are in one way or the other connected by familybonds.

‘Hij was een Fula. Ik zeg hij was, want ik zie hem nietmeer, ik weet niet of hij nog leeft, of waar. Hij verdweenzomaar.’ Maria

‘Gaat het vergeten worden wat we in Atjeh hebben aangericht, gaan onze kinderen het zich herinneren, zullen onze kleinkinderen er nog enig benul van hebben?