While leading the foreign study program in Fez, Morocco, this spring, I had a bit more time than usual for reading novels, and hence reread Hugo Claus's The Sorrow of Belgium. Before his death, Claus was often mentioned as a potential Nobel Prize winner. This book has often been compared in scope and complexity to Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum – both revolve around children coming to terms with the rise of the Nazis in Europe. In the end, Claus never received the Nobel, and this book perhaps indicates why: its more universal themes are drowned out by a quaint parochialism that, alas, makes this great novel truly accessible only to someone who grew up in Flanders and knows intimately its World War II history and the intricacies of its linguistic tradition.