Willem Frederik Hermans

Willem Frederik Hermans was born in Amsterdam on 1 September 1921. A pupil at the Barlaeus Gymnasium, he studied geography in Amsterdam from 1940, defended a thesis in physical geography in 1955 and in 1958 became a senior lecturer at Groningen, where he taught until the early seventies. A feared polemicist, at odds with the literary world, he moved to Paris after a university dispute, then to Belgium. He refused the P. C. Hooft Prize in 1971, accepted the Prize for Dutch Letters in 1977, and died in Utrecht on 27 April 1995.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelThe Darkroom of DamoclesDe donkere kamer van DamoklesWillem Frederik Hermans · 1958Literature