Janwillem van de Wetering (1931–2008,) fully Jan Willem Lincoln van de Wetering, was a Dutch crime novelist, children’s book writer, and many works in English and Dutch.
Born in Rotterdam, Wetering was the son of a wealthy businessman who dealt in a wide variety of commodities. Wetering studied at Delft and Cambridge before living in Cape Town, South Africa. He returned to England and studied philosophy at King’s College London, focusing on Christianity, Socrates, and the modern philosophies of P. D. Ouspensky, Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, and existentialism.
Wetering studied Zen Buddhism at a Kyoto monastery 1958–60, which he recalled in the memoir The Empty Mirror (1971.) He described his other monastic sojourn in America in A Glimpse of Nothingness (1975.) Wetering subsequently lived in London, Colombia, Peru, Australia, Amsterdam, and Maine, USA, serving as a globetrotting businessman, a special constable in Amsterdam, and an author.
In his 40s, Wetering created the characters of detectives Rinus de Gier and Henk Grijpstra for his offbeat, internationally successful thrillers, which included Outsider in Amsterdam (1975; film 1979,) Just a Corpse at Twilight (1994,) and The Perfidious Parrot (1997.) A children’s writer, he created the character Hugh Pine the porcupine for Hugh Pine (1980,) Hugh Pine and the Good Place (1981,) and High Pine and Something Else (1983.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Janwillem van de Wetering
Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.
—Janwillem van de Wetering
Topics: Greed
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