Robert Van Gulik

Robert van Gulik was born in 1910 in the Netherlands. In 1934, he joined the diplomatic service and for many years represented his country in China, Japan, India, and Washington as Secretary and later as Embassy Counselor. His last position was as the Dutch Ambassador to Japan, and he lived in Tokyo until his death in 1967. Besides his diplomatic work, he was also known as an authority on the literature, art, and history of the East. In 1961, he published the classic study "Sexual Life in Ancient China." The plots of his detective novels were inspired by the entirety of Chinese literature, particularly by popular detective novels first published in the seventeenth century.