Belgian author Hugo Claus dies

A video from Belgium, now no longer on YouTube, used to say about itself:

Hundreds of extras from Hamme, in East Flanders, are seen in the movie “Mira or the Decline of the Water Corner”, from a screenplay by Hugo Claus. Forty years ago, this movie attracted more than half a million cinema fans. An unknown bridge over the Durme forms the setting of the first Flemish color film. And Mira, the seductive lead character, became an icon for the town. An old, nameless bridge over the Durme became the cherished Mira Bridge.

From daily De Morgen in Belgium:

Author Hugo Claus (78) died this Wednesday in the Antwerp Middelheim hospital. … His best known work is Het Verdriet van België [The Sorrow of Belgium] from 1983. Claus was a candidate for the Nobel prize for literature several times.

Other work by Claus includes the play Suiker, about the sugar industry where he had worked himself.

I fondly remember Hugo Claus‘ play Tijl Uilenspiegel.

Claus did painting and film making as well.

Hugo Claus and anti-fascism: here.

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