Harry Mulisch

Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch (; 29 July 192730 October 2010) Mulisch's work is also popular among the country's public: a 2007 poll of NRC Handelsblad readers voted his novel The Discovery of Heaven the greatest Dutch book ever written.

Mulisch lived in Amsterdam from 1958 until his death in 2010.

Mulisch had two daughters, his daughters Frieda and Anna, with his wife Sjoerdje Woudenberg, and a son, Menzo, from his relationship with Kitty Saal.

Death

Mulisch died in 2010. His death occurred at his Amsterdam home and his family was with him at the time. Culture minister Halbe Zijlstra bemoaned the demise of the "Big Three" as Gerard Reve and Willem Frederik Hermans had already died.

Works Mulisch gained international recognition with the film The Assault (1986), based on his book of the same title (1982). It received an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best foreign movie and has been translated into more than twenty languages.

His novel The Discovery of Heaven (1992) is considered his masterpiece and was voted "the best Dutch-language book ever" by Dutch readers in a 2007 newspaper poll. "It is the book that shaped our generation; it made us love, even obsess, with reading", said Peter-Paul Spanjaard, 32, a lawyer in Amsterdam at the time of Mulisch's death.

Themes in his work A frequent theme in his work is the Second World War. His father had worked for the Germans during the war and went to prison for three years afterwards. As the war spanned most of Mulisch's formative phase, it had a defining influence on his life and work. In 1963, he wrote a non-fiction work about the Eichmann case: Criminal Case 40/61. Major works set against the backdrop of the Second World War are De Aanslag (The Assault), Het stenen bruidsbed, and Siegfried.

Mulisch often incorporated ancient legends or myths in his writings, drawing on Greek mythology (e.g. in De Elementen), Jewish mysticism (in De ontdekking van de Hemel and De Procedure), well known urban legends and politics

Mulisch was politically left-wing, once signing a book "dedicated in admiration" to Fidel Castro.

In 1984, he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the title Het Ene (The Unifying Principle).