The latest addition to my website is Willem Frederik Hermans‘ Hermans: Herinneringen van een engelbewaarder (A Guardian Angel Recalls). Our hero is Bert Alberegt, a Dutch state prosecutor. In a hurry to get to a trial, he takes a short cut going the wrong way down a one way road and accidentally kills a young girl. He hides the body, and spends the rest of the book wondering whether he will be found out. However, he has a guardian angel who keeps telling him to do the right thing but the Devil is also giving his point of view. These two spend the book advising Bert what to do and what not to do which gives a flippant edge to a serious book. Before killing the girl, Bert had put his girlfriend – a German Jew and Communist – on a ship to England and he is eager to join her but cannot find a way to do so. Things get more complicated when the Nazis invade the Netherlands – it is May 1940 – and Bert barely avoids being killed but is now more eager than ever to flee to England, particularly as it turns out that his best friend has been helping the family of the dead girl. Hermans cleverly mixes the very serious – the Nazi invasion and the death of the girl – with the less serious (the guardian angel vs the Devil) and manages it superbly.