(Nijmegen, NL, 1960) writes essays, short stories and plays, and is a columnist with the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad. He published the novels Laatste woorden (Last words) and Suez and received the Henriëtte Roland Holst Prize in 2005. In 2011's Moeten wij van elkaar houden, het populisme ontleed (Do We Have to Love One Another? Populism Dissected) Heijne shows how globalisation and individualism pave the way for populism. Angst en schoonheid (Fear and Beauty) was published in 2013, an essay about Dutch writer Louis Couperus, whom Heijne admires. In the same year his documentary about Couperus was broadcast. In 2015 he hosted the five-part documentary De volmaakte mens (The Perfect Human). In 2016 his essay Onbehagen – nieuw licht op de beschaafde mens (Discontent - new light on civilized man) was published. In 2017 Heijne received the P.C. Hooft Award for his essayistic works.

(England, 1948) is a political scientist and a philosopher. In his work he is pessimistic about the future. Thus in Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia he slashes the 'neoconservative project' which, through invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, tries to estasblish a new world order: a dangerous cocktail of apocalyptic religion and utopias, inspired by the Enlightenment. In Strawdogs, Thoughts on Humans and other Animals he argues that people are strawdogs, who will cause their own ruin by new technologies and by exhausting the earth. In Al Qaida and What it Means to be Modern Gray warns that wars can be more dangerous than ever by the lethal mix of ethnic and religious enmity, the growth of the world population, growing scarcity and continuing industrialisation in the non-Western world. Gray was a professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. He publishes in The Guardian, New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement.