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
Mac
Gender: Male
After a childhood in Chicago’s slum district, Mac – which is the only name he is given in Thomas B. Dewey’s hard-boiled novels – becomes a police officer in that same city. However, he solved a crime that gangster bosses and corrupt powerful figures did not want solving, so he was sacked. Now he is a private detective, but still had friends in the police department. He is a skilled investigator, h...