Hugo Claus is one of the great narrators of our age.

He is a complete artist as well as a dramatist and movie maker, painter and scriptwriter, but especially a poet.

La sofferenza del Belgio (Ed. Feltrinelli, 1999), Unfortunately his only book translated into Italian, is a great formation novel, rich of all the registers which a true master can use: from tragedy to pure humor; he can make us live and feel the slow metamorphosis of the protagonist child through less and less detached eyes, a story immersed in an archaic and conflictual place where “everything is all right”, an absurd world where even torture is deserved, whereas a great torpor envelops all the other characters aiming to the research of some kind of happiness.

Hugo Claus has given us a masterpiece both for his clear denunciation and for the quantity and quality of his continuous suggestions.