Adriaan van Dis
Adriaan van Dis (b. 1946) was raised in the Dutch town of Bergen along with his half-sisters, the children of parents with an Indonesian background, traumatised by war. He debuted in 1983 with the novella Nathan Sid. After making a name for himself as a travel writer with books such as Het beloofde land (The Promised Land) and In Afrika (In Africa), he sealed his reputation with the award-winning bestseller Indische duinen (My Father’s War, 1994). His later novels such as Familieziek (Family Fray, 2004), De wandelaar (The Walker, 2007) and Tikkop (Betrayal, 2010) have all sold well and received glowing reviews. His novel Ik kom terug (I Will Return) (2014) received the 2015 Libris Literature Prize. That same year he received the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire body of work. In 2017, he published De Zuid-Afrikaboeken (The South Africa Books) and the novel In het buitengebied (In the Hinterland). Van Dis’ books have been translated into many different languages.