Tom Rooduijn

For more than 50 years, Gerard Reve was known as one of the three grand old men of Dutch letters, and he was the most controversial. Openly homosexual and deeply religious, which sceptical Dutch people long held for mockery, Reve was the center of scandal.

A three-volume biography of Reve was published between 2009 - 2012. Before that there were numerous small publications about aspects of his work. In 1982 25 interviews were selected and published. Revelaties. Gerard Reve over zijn werk en leven should be considered a second collection of interviews. However, unlike the 1982 publication, this book also contains a lot of material which was previously unpublished. Tom Rooduijn has collected interviews over a period of 25 years from 1975 to 2000. These interviews have been edited and stylistically altered to create a continuous text, rather than a collection of separate interviews. Although some of Reve's most controversial actions took place in the period before 1975, they are referred to and explained in the running text.

Gerard Reve was 77 years old when Revelaties. Gerard Reve over zijn werk en leven ("Revelations") was published, and lived another six years, with another 3 years before the volumes of his biography started to appear. Thus, for nearly 10 years Revelaties provided the most coherent biographic narrative of Gerard Reve, beside a large number of monographs and articles.… (mehr)