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Cheese Willem Elsschot

Cheese By Willem Elsschot

Cheese by Willem Elsschot


$10.00
Condition - Like New
Only 1 left

Summary

A satirical fable of capitalism and wealth. A clerk in Antwerp suddenly becomes the chief agent in Belgium and Luxembourg for a Dutch cheese and is saddled with 370 cases containing ten thousand full-cream cheeses. But he has no idea how to run a business, and he doesn't even like cheese.

Cheese Summary

Cheese by Willem Elsschot

Cheese is a gentle, satirical fable of capitalism and wealth. A clerk in Antwerp suddenly becomes the chief agent in Belgium and Luxembourg for this red-rinded Dutch delight and is saddled with 370 cases containing ten thousand full-cream cheeses. But he has no idea how to run a business, or how to sell his goods, and he doesn't even like cheese. Steeped in the atmosphere of the 1930s, in a world full of smart operators and and failed businessmen, Cheese gracefully incorporates the rigid class divisions of the time and a man's obsession with status. It is as relevant in our age of Internet investors and dot.com failures as it was when it was written.

Cheese Reviews

'Edam's great moment in world literature' boasts the blurb on the back of this novella, and such a throwaway line encapsulates the charm of a book which has been compared to Three Men in a Boat or Diary of a Nobody. This gentle, deceptively simple Low Country comedy classic is about business and greed in particular, and life generally. Frans Laarmans, a humble shipping clerk, is suddenly elevated to the position of chief agent for a Dutch cheese company. The nemesis of an order for 10,000 full-cream cheeses faces him as his brusque employer is due to arrive, and Laarman begins to crack. Elsschot's achievement is to make the mundane and the trivial somehow significant to us all. Full of sly irony and gentle satire, this is one 'cheese' that has matured well since it first appeared in the 1930s.

About Willem Elsschot

Willem Elsschot (1882 - 1960) was the pseudonym of Alfons de Ridder, head of a successful advertising agency who, unbeknownst to his family, was a hugely successful novelist in his spare time. Cheese, his breakthrough novel, was first published in Dutch in 1933.

Additional information

GOR010593255
9781862074811
186207481X
Cheese by Willem Elsschot
Used - Like New
Hardback
Granta Books
20020207
153
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
The book has been read, but looks new. The book cover has no visible wear, and the dust jacket is included if applicable. No missing or damaged pages, no tears, possible very minimal creasing, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins

Customer Reviews - Cheese