Background
Frank Martin Westerman was born on 13 November 1964 in Emmen in the Netherlands. He grew up in Assen, in a Christian-reformed family.
Frank Martin Westerman was born on 13 November 1964 in Emmen in the Netherlands. He grew up in Assen, in a Christian-reformed family.
He studied tropical agricultural engineering at Wageningen University and worked as a news correspondent for de Volkskrant in Belgrade and National Research Council Handelsblad in Moscow. Westerman studied tropical agricultural engineering at the Agricultural University of Wageningen.
He is currently a full-time writer of non-fiction books, among which are The Republic of Grain (1999), Engineers of the Soul (2002), and Ararat (2007). In 1987, he travelled to Peru, where he did research in Puno. In this period, he also started working as a journalist.
In 1992, he became correspondent of de Volkskrant in Belgrade.
In 1995, Westerman and his colleague were two of the few journalists who were in Srebrenica during its capture. The book Srebrenica: The Blackest Scenario which they wrote using confidential United Nations documents and interviews with earwitnesses, aims to reconstruct the war and massacre in Srebrenica.
Between 1997 and 2002, Westerman was a correspondent of National Research Council Handelsblad in Moscow. As a journalist, he visited many places in the former Soviet Union.
After a visit to Armenia in 1999, Westerman decided to climb Mount Ararat.
Currently, he is a full-time writer based in Amsterdam.