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(Photo: Han Soete)
Geert van Istendael, born in 1947 in Brussels, is a Belgian homme de lettres. He lived the first six years of his life in Utrecht. He later studied sociology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven and worked from 1987 until 1993 as a journalist and newsreader for the Belgian National Television. He is now a full-time writer and lives in Brussels. He is considered a specialist of Belgian politics as is reflected in his most famous work, The Belgian Labyrinth, published in 1989, but constantly updated ever since. He strongly supports the unity of the Benelux-countries as an intercultural Dutch-, French- and German-speaking entity in Europe and although he considers the independence of Belgium as a historical error, he is a passionate lover of its multicultural capital Brussels, as is reflected in Poor Brussels (1992). He recently edited a compilation of short essays in which he gives his personal interpretation of Dutch and German identity (My Netherlands, 2004, and My Germany, 2007). Van Istendael is also a well-known poet; in 2004 he was awarded with the Literary Prize of the Flemish Community.