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Around two and a half million Dutch people born between 1955 and 1965 are counted as part of the so-called „Lost Generation“. They grew up in the freedom and prosperity of the 1970s, but as young adults after 1980 they were confronted with mass unemployment and an all-encompassing recession.

In Na de revolutie. Kind van de jaren zeventig (After the Revolution. Child of the Seventies), Jan Konst (*1963) looks at his youth against the background of historical and social developments. What do the „depillarisation“ of society, individualisation and the reassessment of traditional role patterns mean for the youth of the seventies? What is the attitude to life in the new housing estates like? And what is it like to realise after years of material prosperity that there may be no place for you?

Few of Jan Konst’s peers today would apply the predicate „lost“ to themselves. But in his new book, the author of De wintertuin (The Wintergarden) goes back to a time when the future looked anything but rosy. In this way, he paints a very recognisable picture of a generation and a decade that was to change the face of the Netherlands forever.

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