The Sorrow of Belgium (Dutch: Het verdriet van België) is a major novel first published in 1983 by the Belgian author Hugo Claus (1929–2008). It is widely considered Claus' major work and "the most important Dutch-language novel of the twentieth century" or "one of the great novels of postwar Europe".The Sorrow of Belgium explores the childhood and youth of Louis Seynaeve, a Flemish schoolboy living in the region of Kortrijk during World War II when Belgium was under German occupation. The novel itself is a bildungsroman formed from two sections: "The Sorrow" (Het verdriet); 27 numbered chapters with titles "of Belgium" (van België); text not divided in chapters.The work was first published in an English translation by Arnold J. Pomerans in 1994. It was also made into a mini-series the same year.