The cover description of Gerard Reve’s The Evenings proclaims “the most exhilarating novel about boredom ever written.” As exhilarating as boredom can be, presumably. Translated from its original Dutch to English for the first time since its 1946 publication, The Evenings is the story of Frits, a young office worker who lives, not altogether happily it seems, with his parents. The action – though I use this word loosely – takes place in the evenings of the title, over ten days during the Christmas period, because Frits’s days are simply occupied by work. It is the hours after he leaves the office and before he arrives again that concern us. Although not much really happens then either. He eats dinner, visits people, goes to the cinema, and has nightmares, and that’s about it.