van der Zijl, Annejet
Biography
Annejet van der Zijl is a one of the best-known and most widely read literary nonfiction writers in the Netherlands. She lives in Amsterdam with her husband, a journalist. Born in 1962, she studied mass communication at the UVA in Amsterdam and did a MA International Journalism at City University in London. She worked in magazine journalism until 2000, meanwhile publishing her first book Jagtlust, about a ramshackle villa that was a meeting place for many artists and poets in the sixties. Annejet’s previous books The Boy Between Worlds and The American Princess have been very successful in the USA. The American Princess spent more than fifteen weeks at the top of the national bestseller list in the Netherlands, and was shortlisted for the Libris History Prize.
She has written biographies of Dutch children’s author Annie M. G. Schmidt; Prince Bernhard, the husband of former Dutch queen Juliana; and Gerard Heineken, founder of the famous beer empire; as well as other works. Her nonfiction has been awarded the M. J. Brusse Prize for the best work of journalism and has been nominated for the Golden Owl and the AKO Literary Prize. Her most recent book, Fortune’s Children, was a #1 bestseller and remained on the bestsellerlist for 35 weeks. In 2012, she was awarded the Golden Quill for her entire oeuvre.
