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Portrait image of Robert van Gulik 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...

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Literary figures

Gervase Fen

Gender: Male

Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, as well as an amateur detective in a number of humorous crime stories by Edmund Crispin (pseudonym for Robert Bruce Montgomery). Gervase Fen is a middle-aged, jolly family father with wavy hair who enthusiastically deals with the criminal mysteries he happens to get involved in. By his side he often has the sensible Chief...

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