Annejet van der Zijl

(Leeuwarden, 1962) in 2010 published Bernhard, a reconstruction of the hitherto unknown German background of Prince Bernhard. With this book she obtained her doctorate in history at the University of Amsterdam. The four books which Van der Zijl published have been best-sellers and three of them were adapted for the screen. In 1998 she made her debut with Jagtlust, about a villa in Het Gooi, the meeting-place of artists and poets. Four years later it was followed by Anna, her much-praised biography of Annie M.G. Schmidt. In 2004 Sonny Boy appeared, about the love affair of a Surinamese student and a married Dutch woman, against the backdrop of WWII. The film attracted an audience of 400,000 and was selected the Dutch entry for the Oscars. Van der Zijl grew up in Friesland, studied art history and mass communication in Amsterdam and journalism in London. She worked for HP/De Tijd before deciding in 1999 to become a fulltime writer. Right now Van der Zijl is working on a story set in the US between 1875 and 1950.