Dutch author finds own lost novel while tidying up

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - An 89-year-old Dutch novelist has stumbled on a pot-boiler she wrote that had been lost for decades, and plans to publish it later this year.

Hella Haasse's "Sterrenjacht" ("Hunt for the Stars") was published as a serial in a newspaper in 1950, but the manuscript was lost.

However, Haasse, often called the "grand old lady of Dutch literature", cut out and kept all the instalments.

"I have this incredible pile of paper at home -- and by chance I came across a stack of yellowed newspaper," she told Saturday's edition of the newspaper De Stentor.

She showed the work to her editor as a joke, but the company decided to publish it. It will be released in June.

"It has absolutely no literary ambitions," Haasse told the Volkskrant newspaper. "I had earlier translated a British thriller as a serial novel, so I knew the genre. 'Come on', I thought, 'I'll give it a try myself'."

Haasse has published more than 50 books and won numerous literary prizes. She had her breakthrough in 1948 with the novel "Oeroeg", translated into English as "Forever a stranger".