Henk van Woerden
Henk van Woerden (Leiden, 6 December 1947 – Ann Arbor, 16 November 2005) grew up in Leiden and moved to Cape Town, South Africa, at the age of ten. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Cape Town, before returning to Europe in May 1968. From 1987 onwards he taught at the Academy of Art in Enschede (the Netherlands). He debuted as a writer with Moenie kyk nie (Don’t Look, 1993), which earned him the Geertjan Lubberhuizen Prize for best literary prose debut. This was followed by Tikoes (1996) and Een mond vol glas (A Mouthful of Glass, or The Assassin in the American edition, 1998). Together, these titles form his ‘South African trilogy’. In Notities van een luchtfietser (Notes from an Air Cyclist, 2002) Van Woerden wrote about travelling in reality as well as in the mind. His last novel, Ultramarijn (Ultramarine), appeared in 2005. In 2003 Van Woerden received the Frans Kellendonk Prize for his oeuvre. His work has been translated into more than ten languages.