Maria Dermoût

Biography

In the fifties Maria Dermoût’s novels were well known. Her bestseller The Ten Thousand Things jostled Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago and Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the American bestseller lists. Maria Dermoût was born in Java in 1888. She went to secondary school in the Netherlands, then returned to the Dutch East Indies where she and her husband stayed until 1933. Back in the Netherlands she settled in The Hague where she died in 1962. Dermoût published stories while still young but it was only in the last eleven years of her life that she really blossomed as a writer. Five books appeared and these, together with two posthumous volumes, make up her small but exquisite oeuvre.

Titles

The Ten Thousand Things

(De tienduizend dingen, 1955)

In the fifties Maria Dermoût’s novels were well known. Her bestseller The Ten Thousand Things jostled Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago and Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the American bestseller lists. Maria Dermoût was born in Java in 1888. She went to secondary school in the Netherlands, then returned to the Dutch East Indies where she and her husband stayed until 1933. Back in the Netherlands she settled in The Hague where she died in 1962. Dermoût published stories while still young but it was only in the last eleven years of her life that she really blossomed as a writer. Five books appeared and these, together with two posthumous volumes, make up her small but exquisite oeuvre. Continued...