Author finds novel lost for 57 years – CNN.com

Author finds novel lost for 57 years

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands
(Reuters) — An 89-year-old Dutch novelist has stumbled on a pot-boiler
she wrote that had been lost for decades, and plans to publish it later
this year.

Hella Haasse’s “Sterrenjacht” (“Hunt for the Stars”)
was published as a serial in a newspaper in 1950, but the manuscript
was lost.

However, Haasse, often called the “grand old lady of Dutch literature”, cut out and kept all the installments.

“I
have this incredible pile of paper at home — and by chance I came
across a stack of yellowed newspaper,” she told Saturday’s edition of
the newspaper De Stentor.

She showed the work to her editor as a joke, but the company decided to publish it. It will be released in June.

“It
has absolutely no literary ambitions,” Haasse told the Volkskrant
newspaper. “I had earlier translated a British thriller as a serial
novel, so I knew the genre. ‘Come on’, I thought, ‘I’ll give it a try
myself’.”

Haasse has published more than 50 books and won
numerous literary prizes. She had her breakthrough in 1948 with the
novel “Oeroeg”, translated into English as “Forever a stranger”.

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