Man on the Move - Tapa dura

Compelling ... reminiscent of Sartre's Nausea and Camus' The Outsider” - Ulrich Baron, Die Zeit.

A novel of extraordinary power and moral beauty, executed with a poet's intricate artistry' Independent.

De Kat has written a startlingly good novel ... beneath his staccato, disengaged prose lurk so many layers of reflection and insight that it's hard to know how to start unraveling them' Gordon Darroch, Sunday Herald.

Man on the Move by Otto de Kat is one of those books of rare beauty that appear only once every few years' Gijsbert Kruithof, Haarlems Dagblad.

A melancholic masterpiece' Peter Henning, Basler Zeitung.

In Janaury 1935, Rob, a young Dutch man, departs to Capetown in search of adventure and escape from his bourgeois roots. After a stint in the brutal diamond mines of South Africa, Rob heads to Java to join the Dutch army making a last stand against the Japanese. Here he meets fellow Dutchman Guus, in whom he finds a soul mate and the best friend he will ever have. Together, they are captured by the Japanese, together they survive the hell of the labour camps and together they leap off the side of their ship when it is torpedoed. Rob never sees his friend again, but spends the rest of his life unable to find rest with the shadow of the past hanging over him.