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
Pierre Chambrun
Gender: Male
He was born in France and was active in the resistance during the Second World War; now he runs the luxury Beaumont Hotel in New York. Pierre Chambrun is a short bachelor with a square-set body and dark eyes. He demands that everything at the hotel should work perfectly and must for that reason himself solve the crimes that to his horror take place there in the books by Hugh Pentecost (pseudonym...