Ik stuur deze brief maar op goed geluk weg. Brieven 1939-1950 contains the early correspondance of the Dutch author Hella S. Haasse. The letters were written when Haasse was between the ages of 21 and 32. Most of the letters have been preserved as carbon copies. The correspondance consists of all sorts of written missives, including letters, postcards and cartes postales and telegrams.

When Hella S. Haasse arrived from the Dutch Indies (now Indonesia) in 1938 to go to university in the Netherlands, the threat of war was already apparent, although the Netherlands hoped to remain neutral, as they had in 1914. When war broke out in 1940, her parents urged her to return to the Dutch colony, hoping the war would only play out in Europe. At that stage Japan had not yet entered the war. But Haasse remained in Holland, and was subsequently cut off from her family for more than a decade.

The letters present a first-hand account of her experience of the hunger winter in 1944, the final year of the war. After her study of Scandinavian languages, she started working as a writer, but the letters show that her career actually started out as a performer in cabaret, and that out of her wish "to assert control over the characters on the stage" her career to "manipulate" characters on paper was born.

During the war her parents were intered in Japanese concentration camps. In the later years Haasse sends them food parcels. During the later 40s repatriation of her family partly went via Australia, where they had family. The letters also describe Haasse's early marriage and the loss of her first daughter.

The book consists of the text of the letters, preceded by annotation and explanation by the editor. For this, the editor acknowledges heavy indebtedness to Leven in de verbeelding. Hella S. Haasse 1918-2011, the standard biography about Hella S. Haasse written by Aleid Truijens. ( )