Last Call

by Harry Mulisch

Book Overview

"This is the highest kind of achievement of which fiction is capable. . . . Ranks with the finest European fiction of recent years."--The Christian Science Monitor

Uli Bouwmeester is a retired variety artiste who spends his days whiling away his time. Out of the blue, an invitation arrives to play the leading part in a new drama at the Actor's Theater in Amsterdam, and he is flung with a vengeance from the monotony of life in the suburbs...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140156011
• ISBN13: 9780140156010
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

dazzling! Total theatre; total literature. Magic winding plo

Mulisch accomplished here again a dazzling novel. It is theatre withing theatre. In intricate winding of lives, the old actor, Uli Bouwmeester performs his last role of the last role of the older actor de Vries in Shakespeares Tempest, Prospero.As magically as Prospero, the author weaves places, situations, characters, times, events in moving, twirling, engaging tapestry. In reference to Poe's "Narratives ..of Pym" the ending takes the reader through the life transforming and time transcending narratives of the protagonist. The novel unfolds with the clarity of greek tragedy. But even more than these (after all 3000 years of development) it provides rare glimpses of insight into the deeper issues of life.