Tonke Dragt: The Netherlands ★ Author

“The very wellspring of an artist is her memory. Without memory there’s no recollection; without recollections we are nobody, nothing at all.”

Tonke Dragt

Antonia Johanna Dragt, better known as Tonke Dragt, was born in 1930 in Batavia (now Jakarta) in Indonesia (then known as the Dutch East Indies). She spent much of her childhood there, including three years in a Japanese internment camp (1942-45). She and her family moved to the Netherlands after World War II. Dragt’s formal education took place the Academy of Visual Arts in the Hague. In addition to being a successful author, she also works as an illustrator. She has illustrated works by Paul Biegel, Edith Nesbit, Rosemary Sutcliffe, and Alan Garner. The majority of her works are classified as fantasy or science fiction.

Whilst working as an art teacher, Dragt began writing stories and novels. She rose to fame in 1962 with her second book, De Brief Voor de Koning [The Letter for the King], which has sold over one million copies. De Brief Voor de Koning is set in a fictional medieval world, and starts with five young men attending a silent vigil on the night before they are to be knighted. Sixteen year old Tiuri breaks the vigil by responding to a knock at the door and a cry for help. Convinced he will now never become a knight, Tiuri sets out on a quest to deliver a letter to the king, but in doing so develops an understanding of the true meaning of chivalry. On his journey, Tiuri meets a number of characters who balance two seemingly contradictory sides of the self, such as the wise-fool, Marius.

Dualism is a dominant feature of Dragt’s work, sometimes created through the pairings of different worlds, but also through twins and imagery (such as the use of mirrors) which rely on comparisons. Aunt Willemijn, a character in Dragt’s novel De Zevensprong [The Folk Dance] explains that in each human being there lives more than one person. Having established a contrast, she then undermines it in order to encourage readers and characters to rethink their beliefs.

Tonke Dragt also uses elements of legends and fables, most clearly in Verhalen van de tweelingbroers [The Twin Brothers’ Stories]. Her stories are mainly focused on one or a few male protagonists, often teenagers. They go on personal quests, searches that may be externalized in an item like the letter in De brief voor de koning [The Letter for the King], but which results in a discovery of their own personae. Dragt’s works have been translated into many languages, including German, English, Afrikaans, Czech, Indonesian, and Spanish.