Tais Teng

Tais Teng (born 1952 in The Hague) is one pen name of Thijs van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen, a Dutch writer of fantasy fiction, hardboiled detective, children's books, and science fiction. Teng also works as an illustrator, sculptor, and writing coach. Teng has additionally written under the names Eban Hourst and Ben Bergen.

Tais Teng has written more than a hundred novels both for adults and children in Dutch. He has won the Paul Harland Prize four times. His books have been translated into German, Finnish, French, and English, with Teng himself being a Dutch and English bilingual writer.

He has co-authored short stories and novels with Paul Harland, Eddy C. Bertin, Bies van Ede, Roderick Leeuwenhart, Roelof Goudriaan, and Jaap Boekestein.

The Dutch ziltpunk movement Tais Teng is one of the founders of ziltpunk, a literary movement that seeks to counter the apathetic dismay of many dystopian novels. The ziltpunk stories belong to climate fiction, which looks for solutions to the climate crisis. It is also the Dutch equivalent of solarpunk. The rising sea level is an urgent problem for the Dutch, with half their land below sea level.Ziltpunk describes massive geoengineering projects which writers consider the only way to counter climate change. Sixty-meter-high dikes, mangrove islands planted in the sea to counter flood waves, or even raising the land itself by injecting the underlying chalk layers with hydrogen sulfide are some key examples in the text. Several ziltpunk stories have been published in English, such as Any House in the Storm, Tidal Treasures or Growing Up Along the Mile-High Dyke, Buitendyks, and Where the Night-Gulls Yodel.