A Dog of Flanders

A Dog of Flanders is an 1872 novel by English author Marie Louise de la Ramée published with her pseudonym 'Ouida'. It is about a Flemish boy named Nello and his dog, Patrasche, and is set in Antwerp. In Japan, Korea, Russia and the Philippines, the novel has been an extremely popular children's classic for decades and has been adapted into several Japanese films and anime.[1] Since the 1980s, the Belgian board of tourism caught on to the phenomenon and built two monuments honoring the story to please East-Asian tourists. In 19th century Belgium, a boy named Nello becomes an orphan at the age of two when his mother dies in the Ardennes. His impoverished grandfather, Jehan Daas, who lives in a small village near the city of Antwerp, takes him in. One day, Nello and Jehan find a dog that was almost beaten to death, and name him “Patrasche”. Due to the good care and kindness shown to him by Jehan, the dog recovers its health, and from then on, Nello and Patrasche are inseparable. Nello is forced to work as a milk seller, because Jehan's unnamed, crooked landlord demands that he pay more rent money or face eviction. Patrasche helps Nello pull his small milk cart into town each morning.