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
Dave (David) Brandstetter
Gender: Male
He is the most famous homosexual problem-solver in crime fiction thanks to the twelve novels that Joseph Hansen wrote about him. ‘Dave’ Brandstetter is a middle-aged investigator for an insurance company in Los Angeles, later becoming a freelancer. He is tough and worn out, and is endlessly sad since his boyfriend died. As opposed to many other literary figures, he never gets any older in the boo...