My Little War

‘My Little War’ is based on Boon's own war experiences during World War II. It is a collection of thirty loosely interrelated chapters, each containing a story that can be read independently. Most stories describe the difficult circumstances of life under the occupation; others deal with the deteriorating sexual mores or direct war experiences. The term ‘enemy’ by no means signifies Germans exclusively in the book. People are just as likely, if not more, to be robbed of food, money, or even their spouse's fidelity, by their neighbours as by the Germans.

‘My Little War’ is to Flemish literature what ‘Voyage au bout de la nuit’ by Louis-Ferdinand Céline is to French literature: a slap in the face to bourgeois literature, a radical experiment that thoroughly shook up the traditional novel. In a fragmented and unsettling style, peppered with obscene language, Boon cries out in disgust at a world that has lost all sense and meaning.