Marion Bloem

Marion Bloem, child of parents that were born in Indonesia (mother in Batavia 1929, father in Bandung 1921). Grandparents and great-grandparents were of mixed heritage European/Indonesian. Marion Bloem was born in the Netherlands in 1952 because her parents fled to the Netherlands in  December 1950 Bloem graduated in Clinical Psychology in 1976 in Utrecht at the Rijksuniversiteit, but after her Masters she started making short films, documentaries, television series, and she published children’s books.

Her first novel, Geen Gewoon Indisch Meisje, 1983 was about growing up between two cultures. In the Netherlands she got very good reviews for this debut. There were more than 450,000 copies sold and the novel was considered as a classic in literature.  In the same year (1983) her documentary ‘My Parents Country’ was an enormous success in the Dutch cinema. Bloem has received many awards and attracted much media attention for her novels and films. Marion Bloem published many novels about her Eurasian roots. Her topics are colonial times, decolonization, growing up between cultures, relationships, family, and sexuality.

She is well known in the Netherlands for her novels, her films and as a visual artist. Her first art show was in 1987, and she frequently shows her work in the Netherlands and abroad. In 2008 her long feature film, Far From Family, was released, based on one of her novels with the same title. Recently her magnus opum ‘Een meisje van honderd’ was released in Indonesia by the title Moemie, gadis berusia seratus tahun by KPG, from Gramedia Publishers.

Some of her latest books are autobiographical, about death, and especially her book INDO a literary personal non-fiction book in which she explains what colonialism meant in the Dutch Indies, and about ‘the rule-and-divide’ system, and institutionalized racism.

Bloem received the Constantijn Huygens award 2022, one of the two most prestigious literary awards in the Netherlands, for her whole literary oeuvre.

Marion Bloem lives in the Netherlands, was married to the writer Ivan Wolffers (17-5-1948) from 1971-2022 as he died Oct 8 2022, Bloem has one son who is the head of Amazon -Prime for the BENELUX, and she has three granddaughters, in the age of 17, 13 and 5.