Hans Koning

Hans Koning (born Hans Königsberger, since 1949 officially Hans Konigsberger; July 12, 1921 – April 13, 2007) was a Dutch author of over 40 fiction and non-fiction books.

Koning was also a prolific journalist, contributing for almost 60 years to many periodicals including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Harper's, The New Yorker, and De Groene Amsterdammer.

Born in Amsterdam in 1921 to Elisabeth van Collem (daughter of socialist poet Abraham Eliazer van Collem) and David Königsberger, he was educated at the University of Amsterdam 1939-41, the University of Zurich 1941-43, and the Sorbonne in 1946.

Escaping the occupied Netherlands with the Resistance (he was a wearer of the Dutch Resistance Cross), he was one of the youngest sergeants in the British Army, 7 Troop, 4 Commando, working as an interpreter during the allied occupation of Germany at the end of the war.

As an editor of De Groene Amsterdammer, a Dutch weekly, 1947–50, he was invited to run a cultural program on Radio Jakarta, Indonesia which he did from 1950-51.

It was after this that he came by freighter to the United States.

His first novel, The Affair, was published in 1958.

He also began writing non-fiction, including several travel books, including Love and Hate in China (1966).

During the Vietnam War he turned his attention to protest, helping to found the still-active 'RESIST' organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Noam Chomsky among others.

He was also a creative writing professor at Boston University between 1971-72.

For the next thirty years he wrote fiction and non-fiction and was a two-time recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for creative writers, for fiction.

Four of his novels were made into films: A Walk with Love and Death, which was Anjelica Huston's first film, directed by her father, John Huston; The Revolutionary, starring Jon Voight; Death of a Schoolboy, for BBC London, and The Petersburg-Cannes Express.

He used the pen name Hans Koningsberger (with an added letter 'n'), and from 1972 Hans Koning.

(Until 1972 writing under the name Hans Koningsberger)

Many of his novels have also been published in other countries including England, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan.

From 2000 to 2006 he also found time to run Literary Discord, a radio program broadcast by WPKN Bridgeport, dedicated to discussing such literature and the state of publishing in the United States.

He interviewed, among many others, Russell Banks and Sadi Ranson about the state of publishing in the United States.