Winter in Wartime

This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Winter in Wartime (disambiguation).

Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter, 1972) is a novel written by the Dutch writer Jan Terlouw.^[2] The story is about a sixteen-year-old Dutch boy who lives through the last winter of World War II, and is based on the author's recollections; Terlouw was 8 when the German army invaded the Netherlands.

Winter in Wartime is one of the most popular Dutch books of the postwar period. It sold an estimated half a million copies, and library estimates indicate that more than a million children read the book. In 2014 Terlouw said he still receives mail, daily, about the book. His primary purpose, he said, was to make it clear to readers that they shouldn't think, after finishing the book, that the war had somehow been a glorious period; the second was to provide--in a moderate manner--a human face for the Germans, something he said had not yet been done by the early 1970s.^[3]

In 1973 the novel won the Gouden Griffel and in 1975 it was made into a popular television miniseries directed by Aart Staartjes. In 2008 it was adapted into a motion picture.^[4][5] A musical based on the novel is set to premiere in September 2011.

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