Novelist Harry Mulisch is one of Holland's most important postwar and postmodern writers, constantly reminding the reader of the horrors of war, the moral cost of survival, and the humiliation of the human race. In his writing he never loses sight of World War II, particularly the Holocaust. Although Mulisch lives in Amsterdam and writes in Dutch, his mother tongue is German. His novels, dramas, operas, poetry, essays, and short stories have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch was born in Haarlem, Holland, on 29 July 1927 to Kurt Mulisch, an Austro-Hungarian, and Alice Schwarz Mulisch, a Jew from Belgium. His parents separated in 1937. Mulisch's father collaborated with the Nazis during the German Occupation of Holland and worked for the Lippmann-Rosenthal Bank, where Jews, before they were deported, had to deposit their money and goods. Mulisch's father was one of the three managers of the...