English

About Wim Jurg

Dutch author Wim Jurg (1953) was trained as an historian at the University of Groningen (1971-1979).

He worked, also in Groningen, as managing director of theater productions. Later he worked for a musicians’ union in Amsterdam and, for eleven years, as managing director of a film theater in Arnhem.

From 2002 through 2011 he was director of the Dutch union of writers and translators (since a name change known as Auteursbond, Authors’ Union). From 2017 through 2022 he was a board member of the Authors’ Union.

He was a board member of the Writers’ School in Amsterdam (Schrijversvakschool) and PEN Netherlands. At the moment he is a board member of PEN Emergency Fund.

He performed as a musician and was the singer in the Gebirtig Trio. He wrote a few plays, some short stories, four novels and four non fiction books.

His publications include:

Theater:

Opera 45, opera libretto (1985)

Een Viking met een slangetong (A Viking with a Snake’s Tongue), for children of eight years and older (1989)

he translated Bertolt Brecht’s Die Mutter into Dutch (1981) and wrote a free adaptation of Women of Troy by Euripides (1985)

Novels:

Het verlangen naar Constantinopel (The Yearning for Constantinople), 1998

De secretaris (The Scribe), 1999

De belegering van Anna (The Siege of Anna), 2001

De bekentenissen van Constantijn (The Confessions of Constantine), 2017

Non fiction:

De vierde eeuw, of hoe het christendom staatsgodsdienst werd (The Fourth Century, or How Christianity became a State Religion), 2011

De lange zevende eeuw, of hoe christendom en islam de macht verdeelden (The Long Seventh Century, or How Christianity and Islam divided the Mediterranean), 2014

Onder dezelfde sterren. De laatste heidense senator en zijn christelijke vrienden (Under the Same Stars. The Last Pagan Senator and his Christian Friends), 2020 (Homer Prize 2021 by the Dutch Classical Association)

Nieuw Rome. Het bijna moderne Oost-Romeinse rijk van de vijfde en zesde eeuw (New Rome, the Almost Modern Eastern Roman Empire of the Fifth and Sixth Centuries), 2023