Louise O. Fresco

Following a long international career at the UN, in 2006 Louise O. Fresco (b. 1952) became a professor at the University of Amsterdam, where she is a specialist on the foundations of sustainable development in an international context. She is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and of three foreign Academies, and she holds visiting professorships at several international universities (including Stanford and Palo Alto) and numerous positions on national and international advisory and supervisory boards. As a leading thinker, she was honoured with an invitation to speak at the annual TED Conference in 2009.
Despite her busy schedule, she regularly publishes collections of essays and novels. Her novels, De kosmopolieten (The Cosmopolitans, 2003) and De tuin van de sultan in Rome (The Garden of the Sultan in Rome, 2006), were well received.

The Utopians

(Prometheus, 2007, 350 pages)

How can you be principled when in power? This novel of ideas is about corruption. Michiel van Straten, an environmental activist, has been appointed Minister for Technology and the Environment. He enjoys his new role, but the novel gradually reveals how he is struggling.

Hamburgers in Paradise

Food in a time of scarcity and abundance

(Prometheus, 2012, 540 pages)

What is on our plate? Vegetables, meat or fish? Organic food, slow or fast food, vegetarian, vegan or omnivore fare? Although we may not often stop to think about it, we are inextricably linked to the planet on which we live by our need to eat to survive. This makes the issues involved all the more complicated. In Hamburgers in Paradise, Louise Fresco serves up that complexity as a menu that invites us to sample history and culture, science and politics.