Robert van Gulik with wife Shui Shih-fang 1946
Sample of authors
Gulik, Robert van
Robert Hans van Gulik was born in Zutphen, the Netherlands, and grew up in Batavia (now Jakarta) in the former Dutch East Indies, where his father served as a medical officer in the Dutch Army. Van Gulik’s father collected Chinese porcelain and passed his interest on to his son who taught himself Mandarin. Robert van Gulik was fascinated by Chinese history and culture, and he became an authority o...
Literary figures
Henk Grijpstra
Gender: Male
Grijpstra is a middle-aged detective in Amsterdam who has teamed up with detective Rinus de Gier in a string of police novels by Janwillem van de Wetering. Grijpstra hails from Friesland. He is an unhappily married man who wanted to become a jazz musician or artist as a young man. He consoles himself by playing a set of drums that mysteriously appeared at the police headquarters one day.