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
Hercule Poirot
Gender: Male
The Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot worked for the Belgian police until Agatha Christie transferred him to England. Poirot is characterised by his vanity, his strong French accent, his egg-shaped head and his impressive moustache, and he solves crime in a string of classic whodunits. Poirot eventually became so famous that The Times published an obituary when Christie killed him off in...