Simon Vestdijk was trained as a physician, but practiced medicine for a short time only and thereafter devoted himself to literature. In the Netherlands he is regarded as one of the great men of letters of this century. He was an immensely prolific novelist, and also wrote a vast number of stories, poems, and essays. The Garden Where the Brass Band Played appears to be set in the period of the late twenties or early thirties, and in a provincial town whose mores bear a surprising resemblance to those of North America at that time.