Dutch · Advanced
Read Majoor Frans in Dutchwith every sentence explained
English title: Major Frank
A.L.G. Bosboom-Toussaint · 1874
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
Majoor Frans by A.L.G. Bosboom-Toussaint was first published in 1874. In Passage you read the full text in the original Dutch, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 134,500 words.
A penniless young nobleman. An unexpected fortune. One condition: marry the girl a whole garrison town calls “the Major”.
Leopold van Zonshoven, nearly thirty, has a fine old name and not a cent to go with it. Then a parcel arrives: a great-aunt he never knew has left him everything — woods, meadows, dunes and a million besides. But there is a catch. The old lady has chosen his bride for him: the granddaughter of a general she quarrelled with long ago, a girl raised among soldiers who rides like a cavalryman, handles a sword and has frightened off every young man who came near. Behind her back they call her Major Frans.
Told largely through Leopold's lively letters to his friend Willem, a level-headed lawyer, the story becomes a battle of wills between two proud people who both refuse to be bought.
A.L.G. Bosboom-Toussaint's Major Frank (1874) is a witty, surprisingly modern novel about love, money and a woman who insists on being herself.
- Author
- A.L.G. Bosboom-Toussaint
- First published
- 1874
- Language
- Dutch
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Romance
- Length
- About 134,500 words
How it opens
"O wee!" riep de goedhartige Willem, het naamloos geschrift ineenfrommelend, "het begint er, vrees ik, slecht uit te zien voor Leopold. Het zou toch jammer zijn zoo hij ze moest opgeven, die fortuin, die hem daar als een lokaas wordt voorgehouden, met.... wie weet welke hinderlijke conditiën. Die voorzorg van onbekenden, om zijn raadsman om te koopen, bevalt mij niet. Zij moeten niet denken dat ik er in zal loopen; als er eene clause gesteld is, onbestaanbaar met recht en billijkheid of met zijne eer, zullen zij zien, dat ik geen meester in de rechten ben voor niet. En ze vleien mij met mijne ervaring, mijne voorzichtigheid. Ja! ja!
Reading Majoor Frans in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Dutch. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Dutch book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
