Ferdinand Bordewijk

Ferdinand Bordewijk (Amsterdam, 10 October 1884 – The Hague 28 April 1965) was a Dutch author. His style, which is terse and symbolic, is considered to belong to New Objectivity and magic realism. He was awarded the P. C. Hooftprijs in 1953 and the Constantijn Huygensprijs in 1957. Character (1997), an Academy Award-winning film directed by Mike van Diem, was based on his novel Karakter (1938).

Ferdinand Bordewijk was born in Amsterdam and moved to The Hague when he was ten years old. He studied law at Leiden University. After graduation he worked first at a Rotterdam law firm and became an independent lawyer in Schiedam in 1919, remaining an inhabitant of The Hague all of his life. He was married to the composer Johanna Bordewijk-Roepman. He wrote the libretto for her opera Rotonde (1941).

His first published work was a volume of poetry titled Paddestoelen (Mushrooms) under the pseudonym Ton Ven. It was not particularly well received.

His breakthrough came with the short novels Blokken (Blocks, 1931), Knorrende Beesten (Growling Animals, 1933) and Bint (1934), and two longer works: Rood paleis (Red Palace, 1936) and Karakter ("Character", 1938, in English 1966). Blokken was a dystopian work which was perceived as a criticism of communism. It is comparable to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which appeared one year later and which Bordewijk deemed to be junk ("een enorme prul").