Ste­fan Hert­mans is an inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed Flem­ish author. For more than twen­ty years he was a pro­fes­sor at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Fine Arts, Ghent, where he wrote nov­els, poems, essays, and plays. His pre­vi­ous book, War and Tur­pen­tine, was award­ed the pres­ti­gious AKO Lit­er­a­ture Prize in 2014.