My Strand in Time

My Strand in Time (Ecoral: Mijn strand van de tijd) is a novel by Ecoralian author Gustaaf van Heide. The book was first published in 1836 and has been republished several times as one of the Ecoralian novels. Set in Netjestrand just at the start of the Ecoral Enlightenment, it is one of van Heide's most widely-read and widely-translated novels. The novel explores a number of themes, including masculinity, friendship, rural life, and Ecoralan national identity.

Plot summary
The book follows the young adult life of Costijn Bongaert. The book is written from the first-person with multiple narrators. Each chapter tells the next step of Costijn's life from a different perspective.

The books start in his teenage years. Costijn is a popular kid and frequently seen with his friends Ewout, Thiel, and Laurens. Together, they spend summer afternoons swimming in the sea and dreaming of futures beyond the boundaries of Mathaven. However, as the boys age and transition into manhood, their friendship starts to unravel.

Costijn's friends find their calling beyond Mathaven, much as they dreamed as boys. Laurens earns a place at the prestigious Zoas University and moves away. Thiel joins the army. As the railway comes into Mathaven for the first time, Laurens moves to Netjemond in search of work. Costijn is left alone in the city without direction and without any big dream beyond the sea as his father did and his father before him.

Costijn receives a letter from Laurens. He writes of the job he has in building massive ice-breaking ships that sail beyond the horizon that any fisherman in Mathaven has ever seen. Laurens invites Costijn to move to Netjemond and stay with him as he finds his own footing in the city.

Costijn moves to Netjemond and arrives at Laurens' small, three-room apartment to find that Laurens has since become engaged to a woman named Jutte since Laurens wrote his letter. Laurens and Jutte welcome Costijn all the same, although Costijn must settle for the couch in the main room for sleeping. Kept up late into the night due to the sounds coming from the bedroom, Costijn roams the city by night.

The city is not what Costijn expected. In place of fresh sea air, he inhales dust all day on a factory floor as a sweeper. In place of the wide vista of Mathaven, tall buildings crowd out the skylight bit by bit. In place of the beach where Costijn and his friends would swim, miles of docklands. In place of the friendship he once had, he senses a colder air from his former friend and resentment from Jutte.

He forsakes the city and moves back to Mathaven following a letter from his mother informing him that his father is dying. He takes the train back to Mathaven, walks through the town towards his family home, but turns at the last second to go to the beach where he and his friends swam together. He drops his things on the beach, strips down, and swims out to sea, chasing a new horizon.

Background
Van Heide wrote much of this novel at the same time as he was working as a journalist for the Monstad Democrat, a left-leaning daily newspaper. While the novel takes place in the eastern Netjestrand ward of Ecoralia, the novel holds many similarities with van Heide's childhood in rural Westenkil. Van Heide explained in an interview, "This story is not mine. It is a story of many Ecoralian men whose lives were transformed, for the better and for the worse, by the waves of social change that came."

Reception
Upon initial publication, the book received mixed reviews. Critics of the time found the novel to be underwhelming to the short stories and serialised pieces written by van Heide. Several Ecoralian writers supported the novel, many citing it as one of the first novels to speak to the social transformations of the Ecoral Enlightenment period. However, the book was not a commercial success through the rest of van Heide's life.

The book returned to notoriety when it was selected by the Ecoralian National Library as one of a handful of novels to be added to the national curriculum for Ecoralian literature. With this selection, the book returned to second print of tens of thousands of copies and distributed across the country. In this second wave, the book was praised for its unique and somber perspective on the Enlightenment period and would return to regular reprints for decades.



Costijn's Secret and queer revision
The book received a third wave of popularity in the 1990s after Lens Haarhuis, a literature professor at Netjemond University published Costijn's Secret, a retelling of the novel's story now with explicitly queer themes, in 1993. Haarhuis published the novel after reading through several of van Heide's correspondence, which include love letters to other men and draft versions of Mijn Strand which identified Laurens as Costijn's lover.

The publication of this novel sparked a national debate around LGBT rights in Ecoralia and led to the removal of Mijn Strand from the curriculum in many parts of the country in initial shock. However, within three years, the Ecoralian parliament would create legal unions for same-sex couples and the book would be restored as part of the national literature. The two books were jointly awarded the Ecoralian Book Prize in 1994.

Adaptations
The book has been made into several adaptatons. The first film adaptation was made in 1923 as a classical adaptation of the novel. Most recently, IOM commissioned a series in 2016, Costijn's Strand, which blended both van Heide's original and Haarhuis' revision into a single story.