Bert Keizer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bert Keizer (born 1947 in Amersfoort) is a Dutch writer and physician.

He studied philosophy in Nottingham from 1968, then medicine in Amsterdam from 1972. Graduated 1981, worked as a doctor in Kenya for a while, then in a nursing home in Amsterdam.

His book Het refrein is Hein has been translated into English as Dancing with Mr D.

As a physician in a nursing home he has written about physician assisted suicide (which has been legal in the Netherlands for some years), most notably in his book Dancing with Mr D. While the euthanasia/assisted suicide was the most salient point for the literary criticism, it is not a very large part of the book.

His style is contemplative, with an undercurrent of realism (or some would say pessimism) about the limits of medicine which most people prefer not to think about, and a remarkable intellectual honesty about the emotions of the patient as well as the physician. Some readers were shocked, others found it hilarious.