Toine Heijmans

(Nijmegen, NL, 1969) is a historian, writer, and a reporter and columnist with De Volkskrant newspaper. As a reporter he specialized in minority issues and asylum seekers. Heijmans debuted as a novelist in 2011 with Op Zee (At Sea), about a father who sails from Denmark to the Netherlands with his daughter. The book was adapted for television and the French translation took 2013's Prix Médicis étranger, previously won by the likes of Milan Kundera, Orhan Pamuk and Philip Roth. Pristina was published in 2014, which pits the rigidity of a complacent repatriation officer against the individual suffering of an engaging, Dutchified, Kosovo-Serbian asylum seeker. This past 30 September he received the French Order of Arts and Letters. Heijmans has also written non-fiction, such as 2007's La vie Vinex (Suburban Life), in which he describes life in the Dutch suburb of IJburg. It was preceded  by 2005's De asielmachine (The Asylum Machine) and 2003's Allochtonië (Immigrant Central). He has also written scripts for the TV series De Fractie (The Sitting Members).