The reign of the fortunate has become perhaps an even more topical story than Nelleke Noordervliet could have imagined

A novel about a dictatorship disguised as democracy – Nelleke Noordervliet's new novel is fiction, but it mirrors a scenario that we see happening in real life all over the world.

Nelleke Noordervliet will turn 80 in November, but she continues to write unabated. Since her debut in 1987 with the novel Tine of The valleys where life dwells, Noordervliet has built up a versatile and socially engaged body of work, consisting of essays, novels, stories, novellas and non-fiction. A body of work that was awarded the prestigious Constantijn Huygens Prize in 2018 and the Gouden Ganzenveer in 2022. Over the past five years, five publications have appeared, not counting her new novel.

In the grip of The Movement

The rule of the fortunate is the title of her latest novel, once again a highly socially critical book. The main character and first-person narrator of Het bewind van de gelukkigen (The Reign of the Happy) is Sophie Roth, a former journalist who has fled the city. She retreats to a cottage in a village in the countryside, a house that belonged to a certain Ben, who lay dead for a while on the rug in front of the fireplace.

That grim detail is one of the few things Sophie learns from the taciturn villagers, who come across as stiff and uncommunicative.

Gradually, it becomes clear why this is so. Europe is in the grip of The Movement, which has brought about the ‘Great Change’ in social life. Euphemisms for a political regime that has seized power, stifled the free press and rounded up and deported all ‘undesirable’ individuals: Jews and Muslims, people of colour and members of the LGBT community.

Ragged horde

The population applauds this because they have been led to believe that they have been freed from a ‘ragged and lawless horde of people’ who ‘plundered our lands and raped our women’. A statement that sounds very familiar. The supposed clarity and stability offered by the new regime, the appearance of security, prosperity and happiness, lull many people into a false sense of security. They do not realise the price they are paying for this: an ever-increasing curtailment of their freedom and, above all, such mutual distrust that no one knows what to expect from anyone else anymore.

Sophie has an especially difficult time, because she is not only an outsider and therefore viewed with suspicion, but she is also the (half-)sister of one of the top men in this autocratic regime, while she herself published critical stories as a journalist until she was silenced. She is therefore a suspicious figure to both supporters and opponents of the regime.

Distrust

Who knows that Deputy Commissioner Alain Legrand is her half-brother? Who knows anything about her journalistic past? Is the stiff silence she encounters everywhere only because she is new to the village?
At the same time, Sophie herself is also somewhat distrustful of others, not only because of the past she has to keep hidden, but also because her past, and in particular her childhood, has left such deep wounds that she is hardly able to let others get really close to her, except for her ‘little brother’ Alain and her dear – black – friend Charlito. But it is precisely the former, in his position of power, who is responsible for the murder of the latter. Neglect by her mother, the death and betrayal of loved ones, and a nasty divorce made it impossible for Sophie to be an accessible mother to her own daughters.

And so she searches for her way in her new environment, groping in the dark. She trusts no one, no one trusts her, and yet somehow you have to live together.

Saved as a favour

She meets Frank and his sister Nina Lombard, descendants of an influential family of landowners who turn out to be members of the resistance and hope for her support. One day, Nina is arrested and only released after some time with her wrists and hands hammered to pieces; the fact that she was spared is a ‘favour’ from Alain to Sophie, because other members of the resistance were murdered.

It turns out that everyone has known about her family ties all along. What she perceives as a form of betrayal and responsibility, even though she is not to blame, is used by the resistance group to compel her loyalty and assistance.

Warned

The rule of the fortunate has perhaps become even more topical than Nelleke Noordervliet could have imagined. She must have started writing the first of this book's 387 pages years ago, but it is almost as if reality has overtaken fiction: what she describes in this book is unfolding before our eyes every day on television and in the newspapers. In the United States, in Europe, everywhere. ‘An autocracy can never come about without the approval of the people,’ she writes in this entertaining and topical novel.

Knap makes Noordervliet tangible and visible, showing how these processes work, how enemy thinking, suspicion and mistrust divide people and turn them against each other. How politicians, under the guise of ’the greater good’, can transform a democracy into a dictatorship in no time at all if we are not careful. We have been warned.

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