The Ten Thousand Things

The Ten Thousand Things (original Dutch: De Tienduizend Dingen, 1955) is a novel by the Indo-European novelist and writer Maria Dermoût.

Dermout's omniscient narrator is attempting to make sense of the whole generational saga by carefully reflecting on the wonder of this world while revealing some of the horrible evils that the characters commit.

The title of the book is indirectly derived from the poem Xinxin Ming, which is traditionally (although, according to modern scholarship, probably falsely) attributed to the Third Chinese Chán (Zen) patriarch Sengcan, as quoted by Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy "When the ten thousand things have been seen in their unity, we return to the beginning and remain where we have always been".

Time wrote: "In translation the book is an uncommon reading experience, an offbeat narrative that has the timeless tone of legend...

"[2] Reviewing the 2002 English edition, Publishers Weekly remarked "Dermout beautifully depicts the idyllic setting and handles the darker aspects of the story — ghosts, superstition, even murder — with equal skill.