When Frans Laarmans, a feckless clerk at an Antwerp shipyard, is offered a job importing Edam cheese from Holland, he meekly accepts, despite his loathing of the product. His head soon fills with ambition and hope to be accepted by his brother’s posh friends. But when the first shipment arrives, he has no idea what to do with the ten thousand red-skinned cheeses, and spends most of his time looking for a pedestal desk for his office instead of selling. This superb tragicomedy offers a poignant and at the same time humorous account of what happens when a mediocre man gets caught between his ambition and his utter ineptitude. Less