Robert Van Gulik

Robert Van Gulik was one of the best known authors from the Netherlands, who was famous for writing successful historical mystery books and short stories. He was particularly well known for writing the Judge Dee mystery series. After being born in Holland, author Gulik spent most of his early years in Jakarta, Indonesia. During the time of his stay over there, she learned different languages. He returned back to his home country and obtained his PhD from the Leiden University in the year 1935. Immediately after, he joined the Foreign Service of Netherlands and started working in the linguistics department. At the time of the breakout of the Second World War, author Gulik was in Tokyo. He was evacuated and sent to China. It was here that he met his future wife named Shui Shifang and married her. After his marriage, he spent all his life moving throughout the world. However, his death occurred back home in Hague, The Netherlands. At that time, he was serving as the ambassador of the Netherlands to Japan. Author Gulik started his writing career in the year 1948 with the translation of his Dutch novel, Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee. The final book written by him was released in the year 1966. For writing the books of his Jude Dee series, he borrowed the protagonist from the Chinese detective book of the 18th century titled Dee Goong An. Author Gulik was born as Robert Hans Van Gulik on August 9, 1910, in Zutphen; and died on September 24, 1967. In addition to being a noteworthy author, he was also a noted diplomat, orientalist, and musician. His father was a medical officer in the Netherlands Army.