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
Matt Scudder
Gender: Male
He killed a young girl in an accident, which caused Matthew ‘Matt’ Scudder to leave his job with the police and his family. He started to drink and moved to the notorious ghetto Hell’s Kitchen in New York, but eventually became a ‘sober alcoholic’ and private detective without a licence in a suite of novels by Lawrence Block. Scudder even starts a long-term relationship with the prostitute Elaine...