A self-doubting teacher becomes a fantasy hero in a seductively spiralling story from the author of Letter to the King
There are many reasons why The Song of Seven should not work as a book for children. The most significant is that it lacks a child protagonist; although there is a 10-year-old boy at the centre of the story, its hero is a young schoolteacher, Frans van der Steg. Add in a labyrinthine conspiracy, some metafictional comment on reality, identity and storytelling, a delayed central plot-strand and several matter‑of-fact references to corporal punishment, and it seems certain that disaster will result. Yet, somehow, in a hurdy-gurdy way, it hangs together. It does not boast the breakneck pace of The Letter for the King, Tonke Dragt’s world-renowned 1962 heroic fantasy, a big success for Pushkin when it was translated into English in 2013; rather, it draws the reader seductively along its spiralling paths.
Its author, now an elderly Dutch national treasure, wrote her first book at the age of 12, in a Japanese internment camp in Jakarta. She went on to study art at The Hague, and illustrated both her own work and that of others, including E Nesbit and Alan Garner. Her stories occupy a similar space to theirs, straddling the divide between mundane life and fantasy. Translator Laura Watkinson has faithfully served Dragt’s work: the language of all three of her books published by Pushkin is beautifully lucid, with a clear sense of playfulness and urgency.
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