Bob van Laerhoven was born on August 8th, 1953 in the sandy soil of Antwerp's Kempen, a region in Flanders (Belgium), bordering to The Netherlands, where according to the cliché 'pig-headed clodhoppers' live. This perhaps explains why he started to write stories at a particularly young age. A number of his stories were published in English, French, German, Polish, Spanish, and Slovenian.
DEBUT
Van Laerhoven made his debut as a novelist in 1985 with "Nachtspel - Night Game." He quickly became known for his 'un-Flemish' style: he writes colorful, kaleidoscopic novels in which the fate of the individual is closely related to broad social transformations. His style slowly evolved in his later novels to embrace more personal themes while continuing to branch out into the world at large. International flair has become his trademark.
AVID TRAVELLER
Bob Van Laerhoven became a full-time author in 1991. The context of his stories isn't invented behind his desk, rather it is rooted in personal experience. As a freelance travel writer, for example, he explored conflicts and trouble-spots across the globe from the early 1990s to 2004. Echoes of his experiences on the road also trickle through in his novels. Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, Gaza, Iran, Mozambique, Burundi, Lebanon, Iraq, Myanmar... to name but a few.
MASS MURDERS
During the Bosnian war, Van Laerhoven spent part of 1992 in the besieged city of Sarajevo. Three years later he was working for MSF - Doctors without frontiers - in the Bosnian city of Tuzla during the NATO bombings. At that moment the refugees arrived from the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica. Van Laerhoven was the first writer from the Low Countries to be given the chance to speak to the refugees. His conversations resulted in a travel book: "Srebrenica. Getuigen van massamoord - Srebrenica. Testimony to a Mass Murder." The book denounces the rape and torture of the Muslim population of this Bosnian-Serbian enclave and is based on first-hand testimonies. He also concludes that mass murders took place, an idea that was questioned at the time but later proven accurate.
MULTIFACETED OEUVRE
All these experiences contribute to Bob Van Laerhoven's rich and commendable oeuvre, an oeuvre that typifies him as the versatile author of novels, travel stories, theatre pieces, biographies, non-fiction, letters, columns, articles... He is also a prize-winning author: in 2007 he won the Hercule Poirot Prize for best crime-novel of the year with "De Wraak van Baudelaire - Baudelaire's Revenge." "Baudelaire's Revenge" has been published in the USA, France, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Russia. In 2014, a second French translation of one of his titles has been published in France and Canada. "Le Mensonge d'Alejandro" is set in a fictitious South-American dictatorship in the eighties. The "junta" in this novel is a symbol for the murderous dictatorships in South-America (Chile and Argentine, to mention two) during the seventies and beginning of the eighties. In The Netherlands and Belgium, his novel "De schaduw van de Mol" (The Shadow Of The Mole) was published in November 2015. The novel is set in the Argonne-region of France in 1916. In 2017 followed "Dossier Feuerhand (The Firehand Files), set in Berlin in 1921.
"Baudelaire's Revenge" is the winner of the USA BEST BOOK AWARDS 2014 in the category Fiction: mystery/suspense.
In April 2015 The Anaphora Literary Press published the collection of short stories "Dangerous Obsessions" in the US, Australia, UK, and Canada, in paperback, e-book, and hardcover. "Dangerous Obsessions" was voted "best short story collection of 2015 in The San Diego Book Review. In May 2017, Месть Бодлерa, the Russian edition of "Baudelaire's Revenge" was published. "Dangerous Obsessions" has been published in Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, and Spanish editions. In January 2018 followed "Heart Fever", a second collection of short stories, published by The Anaphora Literary Press. The collection came out in German, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish. "Heart Fever" was one of the five finalists - and the only non-American author - of the Silver Falchion Award 2018 in the category "short stories collections." In April 2018, Crime Wave Press (Hong Kong) brought forth the English language publication of "Return to Hiroshima", Brian Doyle's translation of the novel "Terug naar Hiroshima". The British quality review blog "MurderMayhem&More" listed "Return to Hiroshima" in the top ten of international crime novels in 2018. Readers' Favorite gave Five Stars. In August 2021, Next Chapter published "Alejandro's Lie," the English translation of "Alejandro's leugen."
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