ABSTRACT
Hans Koning, who died on April 13 [2007], was a writer’s writer who never believed in art for art’s sake. Or, to turn it around (as per the French newspaper, Liberation), Koning’s works were “treasures of revolutionary writing and writing plain.” He became a regular contribution to First of the Month-and a close friend to our crew-after we published his fiction in our first issue. He had a much longer history with mainline publications such as The International Herald Tribune and The New Yorker where he worked as a foreign correspondent (“in the grand tradition”) for many years. Koning was best known for his novels (four of them were made into movies, though none did justice to his work) and for his devastating critique of Eurocentric accounts of the discovery of America, Columbus: His Enterprise (which moved Kurt Vonnegut to write, “I think your book on Columbus is important. I’m more grateful for that book than any other I have read in a couple years”).
