Jessica Durlacher is a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 literary criticist

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

, columnist

Columnist

A columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs....

 and novelist.

Her father is the sociologist and writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 Gerhard Durlacher, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp

Auschwitz concentration camp

Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

. She is married to novelist Leon de Winter

Leon de Winter

- Early life :Leon de Winter was born on 24 February 1954 in Den Bosch, in the southern Netherlands. He grew up in an orthodox Jewish family and attended the gymnasium in Den Bosch. After his graduation he attended the academy of Bavaria Film Studios in Munich and the Netherlands Film Academy in...

 and they have two children.

Jessica Durlacher writes book review

Book review

A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review could be a primary source opinion piece, summary review or scholarly review. It is often carried out in periodicals, as school work, or on the internet. Reviews are also often...

s and column

Column

A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...

s for several magazines, such as Vrij Nederland

Vrij Nederland

Vrij Nederland is a Dutch magazine which was established during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II as an underground newspaper but has since grown into a magazine. The weekly magazine is generally considered to be intellectually left-wing...

.

She made her debut as a novelist in 1997 with Het Geweten (The Conscience) and followed with De Dochter (The Daughter) in 2000. Both novels are about children of Holocaust survivors. Her third novel, Emoticon, was published in 2004. The story is set against the background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...

. Her novels have been translated into German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 and Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

.

In the fall of 2005 she was a co-professor, together with Johan Snapper

Johan Snapper

Johan Pieter Snapper , Emeritus Queen Beatrix Professor of Dutch Language, Literature & Culture at the University of California, Berkeley, is a literary critic and champion of Dutch culture in the United States. His scholarly work centers on Post-war Netherlandic literature, specifically authors...

 and Leon de Winter

Leon de Winter

- Early life :Leon de Winter was born on 24 February 1954 in Den Bosch, in the southern Netherlands. He grew up in an orthodox Jewish family and attended the gymnasium in Den Bosch. After his graduation he attended the academy of Bavaria Film Studios in Munich and the Netherlands Film Academy in...

, at Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 in the course Anne Frank

Anne Frank

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...

 and After about Dutch Holocaust literature and film and about recent religious and political developments in the Netherlands.