The novel (Villa de Rose) by the Belgian Willem Elschot .. When a small hostel reduces human lives

Damascus-Sana

The Belgian writer Willem Elschot is classified as one of the prominent Flemish novelists in the first half of the twentieth century, but he is almost unknown to the Arab reader, so the translation of his novel (Villa de Rose) came to know him, especially since it met with great success upon its publication.

The transfer of this novel to Arabic from English was undertaken by Tawfiq Al-Asadi, one of the translators with great experience, and he sought to preserve the high and seasoned narrative style of Elschot in his short novels, which distinguished him as a pioneer in the realist school of Flemish literature.

The tragic and comedic character of this novel is evident and is closer to being a group of overlapping stories that take place in a pension (a small hostel) for families located in the countryside of Paris bearing the name (Villa de Rose), to expose its strangers inmates with their different personalities and their hopes and disappointments.

In the novel, a wonderful presentation of the life of the Brolo couple who run the hostel and live their lives with the inmates with monotony and simplicity before he surprises them in the morning while they are having breakfast with the sound of gunfire to run to the corpse lying in the garden of one of the inmates who appears to have shot himself.

This incident is not all that is contained in the novel. Rather, Iskhot narrates with great accuracy and fluidity pictures from the lives of 12 people of different nationalities who reside in this hostel as if it summarizes the lives of people on Earth and how they get together and fight at the same time.

It is noteworthy that the novel Villa de Rose is located in 199 pages of medium volume, and it is one of the publications of Dar al-Takween for authorship, translation and publication.

Rasha Mahfoud