The Discovery of Heaven
SynopsisPlot
The story begins with the meeting of Onno and Max, two complicated individuals whom fate has mysteriously and magically brought together. They share responsibility for the birth of a remarkable and radiant boy who embarks on a mandated quest that takes the reader all over Europe and to the land where all such quests begin and end
Story
About this book
The Discovery of Heaven follows two men, Onno and Max, whose lives become entangled after a chance meeting in the Netherlands. Onno is a linguist from a prominent Dutch political family, and Max is an astronomer whose past is marked by the Second World War. Their friendship deepens through shared intellectual obsessions, and both men become responsible for the arrival of a boy whose life takes on unusual significance.
Harry Mulisch built this long novel around fate, religion, science, and the aftermath of wartime trauma. A framing device set in a celestial register suggests that events on Earth may be steered by forces outside human understanding. The child born to the two friends grows into the figure charged with a task, and the story moves from Dutch cities through parts of Europe toward older ground further east.
Mulisch, one of the best known Dutch novelists of the twentieth century, first published the book in Dutch in 1992 as De ontdekking van de hemel. Alongside the philosophical and theological questions, he keeps a dry humor running through the pages. A film version directed by Jeroen Krabbe followed in 2001.
