One of the key works of Louis Paul Boon, a Flemish author born in 1912. He died in 1979, days before he was to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.

Menuet – Minuet in English – is an existential work about just three characters: a doubting, socially awkward man, his wife, and their young, cynical maid. Boon embeds their story in a stream of authentic newspaper clippings about accidents, murder and the like.

The three chapters tell the same story, but Boon switches the viewpoint with each chapter.

It has been translated into English, French, German, Swedish, Hungarian, Polish, Danish and Italian. You could do worse than hunt down a translation: Menuet packs a lot of punch for its short length: only 101 pages, but it manages to confront its readers with their own outlook on life.

Full review/discussion here, in Dutch - but it should be easily enough translatable using some free online AI. ( )

Een driehoeksverhouding, bekeken vanuit drie hoeken. ( )