Hella Haasse was born in Djakarta, she spent her early years in the Dutch East Indies. She trained at drama school and has written several plays, novellas, autobiographies, essays and poems but it is for her novels that she is best known. Since the publication of her novel, Urug which was filmed in 1993, she has been widely recognised. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Constantijn Huygens Prize in 1987 and the P.C. Hooft prize in 1983.
Translated titles include:
The Scarlet City. (Academy Chicago)
In a Dark Wood Wandering. (Hutchinson)
Forever a stranger. (Oxford in Asia Press)
Threshold of Fire. (Academy Chicago)