Leon de Winter
Leon de Winter (b. 1954) became known in the early 1980s with subdued, intellectual novels like Zoeken naar Eileen W (Looking for Eileen W.) and La Place de la Bastille, but he later concentrated on creating vehicles for his most important themes – Jewish identity after the Second World War, good and evil – in what he refers to as ‘good reads.’ Kaplan (1986), SuperTex (1991), Zionoco (1995) and God’s Gym (2002) each became bestsellers. De Winter invariably writes about a man in a crisis, searching for his (Jewish) roots and being forced to make existential choices. His cinematic style reflects the fact that De Winter is also a film maker. Het recht op terugkeer (The Right of Return, 2008) has been nominated for both the AKO Literature Prize and the NS Public’s Choice Prize. De Winter is a high-profile political commentator, whose columns and essays have been published in Dutch periodicals and newspapers, as well as in German titles such as Die Welt and Der Spiegel.
