{"id":1127,"date":"2026-07-21T13:59:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T13:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/?p=1127"},"modified":"2026-07-21T13:59:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T13:59:02","slug":"book-review-herman-koch-de-overbodigen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/21\/book-review-herman-koch-de-overbodigen\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review: Herman Koch &#8211; de overbodigen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Herman Koch the famous dutch writer has published a new book: de overbodigen (the superfluous).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The main character is biologist Herbert who travels with his wife to the English greenlands for a famous hiking path. As the book progresses the events which induce the tension that is described from the first page are gradually becoming more clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some of the passages almost describe a healthy marriage although most of the times the book describes perfect examples of <em>mushrikeena<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The title refers to the protaganists&#8217; thesis that the human species is &#8220;superfluous&#8221; in relation to &#8220;earth.&#8221; The protagonist does not use &#8220;mother earth&#8221; but this is only because it would be out of character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <em>overbodigen<\/em> is less perfect than his &#8220;Het diner&#8221; (the dinner), which is best read in Dutch. The English translation dissapoints.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Herman Koch the famous dutch writer has published a new book: de overbodigen (the superfluous). The main character is biologist Herbert who travels with his wife to the English greenlands for a famous hiking path. As the book progresses the events which induce the tension that is described from the first page are gradually becoming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[133,134],"class_list":["post-1127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-koch","tag-nederlands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1127"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1181,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127\/revisions\/1181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harmenscholte.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}