Tip Marugg

Silvio Alberto (Tip) Marugg (1923–2006) was a Dutch-Curaçaoan writer and poet, best known for his 1988 novel De morgen loeit weer aan (translated into English as The Roar of Morning ). His style is best characterized as a variation on magic realism. Marugg wrote poetry before publishing three novels; he is also the author of Dikshonario Erotiko, a dictionary of all words with an erotic meaning used in Papiamentu.

Biography Ancestry Marugg's ancestors on his father's side hail from the Swiss town of Klosters, and moved to the Netherlands. His great-great-great-grandfather was born in Amsterdam in 1784; he was a surgeon who left for Curaçao in 1804 where he married Elisabeth Schul(d)er. Silvio Alberto Marugg was the son of Johann Isaac Abraham Marugg (1893-1968) and Johanna Helena Curiel (1887-1961); he was one of seven siblings who survived infancy. His mother was from Curaçao but had been raised in Venezuela.

For many years Marugg worked on his third novel. A handwritten manuscript was typed out at the University of the Dutch Antilles, then brought to Amsterdam for publication. De morgen loeit weer aan (1988) was an instant success; it was reprinted six times in the first year. It was nominated for the AKO Literature Prize, and he won the Cola Debrot award in Curaçao (1989). In 1991 he published Un prinsipio pa un Dikshonario Erotika Papiamentu, an alphabetical list of words and expressions in Papiamento pertaining to love, eroticism, and sex. Initially refused by publishers on Curaçao, it is a linguistic study demonstrating Marugg's deep knowledge of Dutch and Papiamento.