Hendrick van Kampen

Hendrick Julius van Kampen (born 22 February 1937) is the German writer of The Purple Carrot (1981), and many essays and columns. Van Kampen was born in Germany but fled together with his parents to Toronto in Canada during World War II. Later in his life he lived in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Early life
Hendrick van Kampen was born on 22 February 1937 in Münster, Germany. His parents were Jews of German origin. In 1943 his family fled from Germany to Toronto, Canada. Here Van Kampen attended the German International School Toronto () . In 1960 he started studying Literature and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. After successfully finishing his Bachelor degree in 1964, he moved back to Germany, where he started studying Comparative Literary Studies for his Masters at the Freie Universität Berlin in West Berlin. As a member of the German student movement, the 68er-Bewegung, he took part in the protests of 1968. He moved to Copenhagen in 1982, after meeting the Danish actress Evelyn Lindström, who married in 1983. Also in 1983, Joseph van Kampen, his only son, was born in Copenhagen.
Authorship
Van Kampen made his literary debut in 1981 with the novel The Purple Carrot, which won the Aspekte-Literaturpreis for best debut novel. It was written in German and published by Aufbau-Verlag.
Critics hailed it as a “Einen Satz über van Kampen’s The Purple Carrot zu sagen, ist, als wollte man Goethes Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderte in einen Kirschkern eingravieren” ["to say a sentence about Van Kampen’s The Purple Carrot, is, as if you would engrave Goethes conversations with German immigrants in a cherry stone."]. Furthermore, his novel won the Georg Büchner Prize in 1982. In the same year The Purple Carrot (bladjb) was translated into more than 38 languages and also won the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Later Life
Van Kampen appeared multiple times on national television, both in Germany and in Denmark. In 1983 he started working at the University of Copenhagen as an assistant-professor. He also visited universities in Europe and the United States giving guest lectures.
He wrote newspaper and magazine columns and essays. Although there has been a rumor about Van Kampen working on a second novel, he never published another novel, making The Purple Carrot (babfvgjlk) his one and only literary work.
His marriage with Evelyn Lindström ended in 1996, after which he raised his son Joseph as a single father. In September 2014 Van Kampen was diagnosed with prostate cancer, from which he died in December 2014.

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