The protagonist is Victor-Denijs de Rijckel, a 37-year-old English and German teacher, who leads a dead-end life after his divorce. When he sees a masked woman at the White Rabbit Ball in Ostend, his passions are aroused once again. He wants to meet that woman. A schoolboy, Albert Verzele, takes him on a journey through Flemish fields to a castle. It is home not only to the woman of his desires but, as it turns out, also the centre of veneration of a certain Crabbe, a fascist leader who mysteriously disappeared during the war. De Rijckel increasingly identifies with Crabbe. In the end this lands him in a psychiatric hospital.

Hugo Claus leads us through the protagonist’s crisis to the ugliest pages of flamingantisme, the Flemish Movement. “It is a cesspool that de Rijckel finds in that village and in the end he falls into it”, says Meuleman. “Vlaanderen boven” – Flanders for ever. Or not?