biography
pronunciation:
[kowsbrook]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1929– )
|
| biography:
| Novelist, poet, and essayist, born in Pematang Siantar, former Netherlands East Indies. His work is influenced by the time he spent in a Japanese internment camp during World War 2, and he is regarded as one of the most influential Dutch post-war essayists. Although he began as a poet and belonged to the Movement of Fifty, his significance as a poet is rather small. In the 1960s he concentrated on writing essays which were collected in several volumes, including the series Anathema's. His polemic with the writer J Brouwers about the historic accurateness of his description of Japanese internment camps is one of the most notorious post-war controversies. In his major work Het Oostindisch kampsyndroom (1992, Camp Syndrome of the East Indies) collected in Anathema's 6, he tries to come to terms with his war past and negate the myths about the former Netherlands East Indies both before, during, and after World War 2. In 1978 he was awarded the P C Hooft-prijs for his contemplative prose. |
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