A GREAT AND ENTHRALLING ADVENTURE

and about Central Asia was set up. At first the Mouton letterhead read ‘Publishers’ and ‘International Antiquarian Booksellers’ in the same breath. The publisher and the bookstore continued to operate together for a few more years, but from the beginning of 1961 on De Ridder’s letterhead reads only‘Publishers’. The departure of the most important staff member result ed in the closing of the antiquarian bookstore on January 1, 1966. The bookstore, just as the publishing house, had been located at first on Z.O. Buitensingel in The Hague and on Kerkstraat in Rijswijk, but later it was housed independently at Javastraat 29 in The Hague. When on trips abroad, Eekhout, the president of Mouton, was occasion ally surprised to hear about the fine reputation of his company, since it was known in the Netherlands only as a printing house. In an interview with the The Hague daily Het Vaderland, he declared in connection with the closing of the antiquarian aspect of the business: Doodzonde. Juist door middel van dat antiquariaat onderhielden we ook goede wetenschappelijke contacten met bijvoorbeeld Rood-China, wij waren vaak de leverancier van nieuwe Amerikaanse wetenschappelijke uitgaven aan Peking - bemiddelaar dus, omdat Peking niet rechtstreeks in Washington wil bestellen. We kochten in Praag, Moskou, Beograd, noem maar op, soms hele bibliotheken tegelijk, die we dan herdistribueerden over de hele wereld. [...]. Als wetenschap pelijke uitgeverij vormen wij op ons gebied een trait d’union tussen Oost en West. We hebben zowel contacten met landen achter het Ijzeren Gordijn als met Washington. En daarmee dienen wij zowel een praktisch als een idealistisch doel. 20 [It is a real shame. That antiquarian bookstore was just what helped us maintain good scholarly contacts with, for example, Red China. We were often the suppli ers of new American scholarly publications to Peking - in effect, the middleman, because Peking would not order directly from Washington. We would sometimes buy whole libraries in Prague, Moscow, Beograd, you name it, and then we redis tributed them all over the world. [...]. As a scholarly publisher we form a link between East and West in our area. We are in contact with countries behind the Iron Curtain as well as with Washington. By doing this we are serving both a practical and an idealistic purpose.] Mouton had every interest in good contacts with the former communist world. That became clear when the printing house became involved in a deal with unexpectedly great political dimensions: the publication of the Russian text of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doktor 2ivago, which was banned in

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