Background
He was born in Amsterdam and was raised as a communist.
columnist literary historian translator writer
He was born in Amsterdam and was raised as a communist.
He lost his "faith" in his twenties and became an active critic and opponent of the Soviet regime. With his help, work of dissident Andrei Sakharov was smuggled to the west, and his Alexander Herzen Foundation published dissident Soviet literature. In 1978, Karel van het Reve delivered the Huizinga Lecture, under the title: Literatuurwetenschap: het raadsel der onleesbaarheid (Literary studies The enigma of unreadability).
He is considered to be one of the finest Dutch essayists, his interests ranging from the fallacies of Marxism to nude beach etiquette.