Kees van Beijnum

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Kees van Beijnum (born March 21, 1954 in Amsterdam ) is a Dutch writer .

Live and act

Before he started writing novels and screenplays in 1991, Beijnum worked, among other things, as a journalist . He made his debut as a writer with the crime novel Over het IJ about a murder case in Amsterdam.

His novel Dichter op de Zeedijk was nominated for the Dutch AKO literary prize and was made into a film.

The novel Die Archivarin (1998), published in German in 2000, is based on the life of Florentine Rost van Tonningen (1914–2007), a Dutch National Socialist who remained true to her Nazi convictions until her death. The film adaptation of the book was nominated in 2003 for the Golden Calf , the award of the Dutch Film Festival.

The novel De Oesters van Nam Kee ("Oysters in Nam Kee") was awarded the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prize in 2001 and was on the longlist of the Libris Prize. This book was also made into a film (with Katja Schuurman ). Van Beijnum's books have been published by De Bezige Bij since 2001 .

Van Beijnum also wrote the scripts for De langste reis ("The longest journey", 1996) about the kidnapping of the businessman Gerrit Jan Heijn and for De Heineken ontvoering ("Die Heineken-Entführung", 2011) about the kidnapping of the brewer Freddy Heineken .

De Offers

De Offers ("The Victims") was published on October 2, 2014. The book is a historical novel about a Dutch judge who is sent to Japan to represent his country in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East . In the book the main character is called Rem Brink (the actual Dutch representative in the tribunal was Dr. iur. Bert Röling ), but the other judges are mentioned by name. In the week the book was published, the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad wrote that the book had caused a "commotion". Van Beijnum used diaries and letters that had been provided to him in confidence by one of Judge Röling's sons, the newspaper said. The source material was given to Van Beijnum so that he could write a script for the director Pieter Verhoeff. Hugo, the judge's son, complained against the use of the material for a novel instead of a screenplay, also because he was writing a biography of his father himself. He also contradicted parts of the novel in which the main character visits brothels and eventually abandons a lover who is pregnant with his child. Van Beijnum said, according to the newspaper, he was constructing a fictional character and “maybe he used a few small bits” from the source material (“a little book”) that Hugo Röling gave him.

On December 14, 2014, the Dutch daily De Volkskrant called the affair “the literary scandal of 2014”. The newspaper revealed that van Beijnum had made a few changes to his book prior to publication to accommodate Hugo Röling's complaints. The newspaper also quotes the director Pieter Verhoeff, who had asked the editor not to receive thanks from the author in future editions for "having contributed nothing to the book". The biography De rechter die geen ontzag had (“The judge who had no awe”) was published on October 1, 2014 by Hugo Röling.

Book publications

  • Over het IJ: de reconstructie van een moord (1991)
  • Here zijn leeuwen (1994)
  • Poet op de Zeedijk (1995), made into a film
  • De ordening (1998, German title: Die Archivarin , from Dutch by Marianne Holberg, DVA, Stuttgart / Munich 2000), filmed under the title De ordening (2003)
  • De oesters van van Nam Kee (2000), made into a film
  • De vrouw who had everything (2002)
  • Het verboden pad (2004)
  • Paradiso (2008)
  • Zoon van (2009)
  • Een soort family (2010)
  • De offers (2014)
  • Het mooie seizoen (2017)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dutch Foundation for Literature (Dutch)
  2. ↑ a b Author profile Kees van Beijnum on the website of the De Bezige Bij publishing house (Dutch).
  3. ^ IMDB profile Kees van Beijnum
  4. ^ Riot over a new book by Kees van Beijnum. ; nrc.nl, October 1, 2014 (Dutch)
  5. ↑ I'm indulging Van Beijnum some reputational damage. Volkskrant, December 13, 2014 (Dutch)
  6. ^ Hugo Röling, De rechter die geen ontzag had. Bert Röling en het Tokiotribunaal , Wereldbibliotheek 2014, 384 pages.
  7. ↑ Reviews at perlentaucher.de
  8. ↑ De ordening at IMDb
personal data
SURNAME Beijnum, Kees van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam