The Dutch writer, journalist and essayist Jeroen Brouwers passed away on Wednesday. His publisher Atlas Contact makes this known. He was 82 years old.
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After a writing career of more than sixty years, Jeroen Brouwers, who had lived in Belgium since 1993, passed away. ‘After a short illness’, reports his publishing house† He had struggled with ill health for years. In a interview with our newspaper he said last year that he felt his end approaching. He had not been writing for quite some time.
Brouwers was regarded as one of the most important authors and greatest stylists of Dutch literature. Among the most famous titles are sunken red, Secret rooms, Dateless days, bitter flowers in The wood† His work was highly prized. His latest novel Client E. Busken was awarded the Libris Literature Prize in 2021. He also made a name for himself with sharp polemics.
Brouwers was born in 1940 in Batavia, in the then colony of the Dutch East Indies. During the war, he and his mother and sister ended up in a Japanese internment camp, about which he later sunken red wrote. In 1948 he moved to the Netherlands as an 8-year-old. He stayed in Catholic boarding schools until he was seventeen. Experiences that shaped his life and work.
“The books I’ve written are my biography: they are the footprints I leave on my way,” his publishing house quotes him as saying. ‘All my books are autobiographical and nevertheless all are lies – so I don’t write history, but literature: mine. I am the stories I tell.’
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