A fascinating account from a highly acclaimed writerof the life and
charming inhabitants of a typical countryside village, and how it must
adapt and change in order to survive in the modern worldThe countryside
is in crisis. The shops are closing down in the villages, there is no
school for miles around and, when they grow up, the few remaining
children will escape to a less arduous life in the city. The village as
we have known it for centuries must adapt to survive, but what will be
lost in the process? In this book Geert Mak returns to the
smallNetherlands village of his childhood, Jorwerd (pop. 330 and
falling), and meets the present-day Jorwerders: a stubborn, stoic people
for whom the flat, windswept landscape has been a source of livelihood
for generations, but is now rarely more than a tourist attraction. He
has tea with the butcher's wife, drops in on the pub for a beer, and
recounts the stirring story of Old Peet, a farmhand who was born, lived,
and died in Jorwerd. Such men are an extinct species in the new
free-market Europe and, with his passing, the village he lived in moved
a step along the road of terminal decline. Jorwerd is a paradigm for the
changing face of the countryside around the world, but Mak discovers
that Jorward posesses, despite its travails, a neighborliness and sense
of community that no longer exist in urban life, while ancient families
struggle to preserve their long-established way of life" "in a world
obsessed with money and profit."
