Lutz van Dijk, born in Berlin in 1955, was a teacher in Hamburg before working at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. He wrote his doctoral thesis on “Oppositional Teacher Behaviour 1933-1945” and played a leading role in educational peace work in the 1980s. Since 2001, he has lived in Cape Town as a writer and co-founder of the South African foundation HOKISA for children and young people affected by HIV/Aids. His novels and non-fiction books have been nominated for the Oldenburg Children’s and Youth Book Prize and the German Children’s Literature Award, among others. In 2001, Lutz van Dijk received the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize, and in 2009 he was awarded an honorary professorship in poetry by the University of Oldenburg.
