A Frequent Guest Returns

At the end of this blog, I'm going to post advice for the translator. I am now on p. 156. Vocabulary started getting harder. I went from almost going line by line to researching every word with multiple sources.

Finally, the man who is always preceded by wild vocabulary exercises showed up: Abraham Kuyper. Big Mak mentions that Colijn was in his shadow.

I was in too deep. I had to read some background in English. First, I found that Kuyper was a minister, journalist and politician. In the US you usually don't see all three in one person. Then, I found out that Kuyper was PM from 1901-5.

I wondered how Colijn could have been in Kuyper's shadow. I still do. Kuyper wasn't the first PM from the Anti-Revolutionary Party. Also, Colijn wasn't the end of a long drought for them. Theo de Meester succeeded Kuyper. The next Anti-Revolutionary PM was Colijn himself, from 1925-26.

Putting it into context for Americans, Hendrikus Colijn appears to have been like Grover Cleveland, an unremarkable president who was elected for two non-consecutive terms. During his longer term in the 1930s, he appears to have been as clueless as Herbert Hoover.

Anyway, I urge the translator to add an introduction and an appendix. Maps and a timeline would also be helpful.