Belgian author Hugo Claus dies at 78

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Prolific Belgian writer Hugo Claus, whose Flemish novels, poetry and plays made him a frequently tipped candidate for the Nobel literature prize, has died at age 78, his publisher told the Belgian news agency Belga.

Ghent-born Claus, author of "The Sorrow of Belgium," suffered from Alzheimer's disease and had asked for his life to be terminated under Belgium's liberal euthanasia law. He died on Wednesday at a hospital in Antwerp.

Along with French-speaking Georges Simenon, creator of the legendary detective Maigret, the Dutch-writing Claus was Belgium's best-known international author.

He won seven Belgian state prizes and the Netherlands Prize for Letters and was a noted painter and film-maker as well as the author of more than 1,000 pages of poetry, some 60 plays, 20 novels and essays, film scripts, libretti and translations.

"The Sorrow of Belgium," published in 1983, recounts the pre-World War Two years, the German occupation and the beginning of the post-war period in the Flemish village of Walle, exploring the sensitive subject of Belgian collaboration with the Nazis.

It has been translated into Chinese, English, French, Italian and Polish.

Born in Gent on April 5, 1929, Claus had a strict Roman Catholic education before studying at the local art academy. He settled in Ostend and wrote his first book of poetry in 1947.

Reuters/Nielsen