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Double Play: The Story of an Amazing World Record

Double Play, the first novel by the Curaçaoan author Frank Martinus Arion, is a legendary book. It was published in 1973 and translated into Danish, German, and English. The original Dutch version is now in its twenty-first edition of 575,000 paperback copies, printed for a campaign organized by the Foundation of Collective Propaganda for Dutch Books (CPBN). Free distribution of the book to readers of Holland’s numerous state libraries began on 19 October 2006, and just a few days later 150,000 extra copies had to be printed, bringing the total to 725,000. This is all the more remarkable in that Double Play has been readily available for the past thirty-three years, being a literary fixture in the Antillean and Dutch public school curriculum. What is it that makes this book so special? Arion wrote his narrative in the aftermath of 30 May 1969, the day that Curaçaoan laborers staged a massive protest against poor working conditions and discrimination on the island. The author tries to come to grips with this situation. He depicts life among ordinary people as it unfolds during a game of dominoes on a Sunday afternoon some time after that memorable day. The game of dominoes is conceived as a ritual among four friends, who play prominent roles in the island’s black communal life. The dominoes themselves are symbolic of the white and black sections of Willemstad. The setting of the story is the black suburb of Wakota, whose native flora bears the names assigned to it by the local Creole tongue. The impressive residence of its most successful citizen stands at the top of a hill, while the house of the poor taxi driver squats further down, like a slave hut, amid unsanitary conditions. The Catholic church and the cemetery are essential to Wakota’s ambience, as is the atmospheric sound Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Issue 74, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2007, 200 202