| The Evenings | |
| Title Orig: | De avonden |
| Author: | Gerard Reve (Simon van het Reve) |
| Country: | Netherlands |
| Language: | Dutch |
| Set In: | Amsterdam, 22–31 December 1946 |
| Publisher: | De Bezige Bij |
| Release Date: | November 1947 |
| Media Type: | |
| Isbn: | 978-90-234-5573-8 |
| Dewey: | 839.3 |
| Congress: | PT5881.28.E9 A95 1972 |
| Oclc: | 35952069 |
The Evenings: A Winter's Tale (Dutch: De avonden: Een winterverhaal) is the debut novel of the Dutch author Gerard Reve. It was released in November 1947 under the pseudonym "Simon van het Reve".
The novel describes ten evenings out of the life of the 23-year-old office clerk Frits van Egters living in Amsterdam. It is partitioned into ten chapters, of which each describes an evening between 22 and 31 December 1946. The novel was written very shortly after World War II. Though the war itself is hardly mentioned, the story gives, by describing an individual's experiences, a detailed description of contemporary post-war society which was marked by fear, boredom and loneliness.
Upon its original release, the book shocked the critics and received mixed reviews. Godfried Bomans in Elsevier magazine described the novel as "grim, cynical and totally negative".[1] Simon Vestdijk, on the other hand, praised the novel's grotesque humour.
In the 1950s, the novel remained popular in the Netherlands, especially among adolescents who easily identified with the main character. In a 2002 poll, members of the Society for Dutch Literature ranked De avonden first among works since 1900 in the Dutch canon.[2] In 2007, De avonden was named as one of the Top 10 Dutch language novels of all time by readers of the newspaper NRC Handelsblad.[3]
The book was released as Die Abende in Germany in 1987, Les soirs in France in 1989, Az esték in Hungary in 1999, Večery in Slovakia and Kvällarna in Sweden in 2008, and Las noches in Spain in 2011. The novel was translated into English only in 2016, by Sam Garrett.[4]