Hugo Brandt Corstius (born 29 August 1935 in Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant) is a Dutch author known for his achievements in both literature and science.
In 1970, he was awarded a PhD on the subject of computational linguistics. He used to work at the Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam. However, to the general public he is mostly known for his writing, in particular
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Hugo Brandt Corstius has written under over sixty different pseudonyms, allonyms and aliases. He claims that each of those is part of his character.
In Vrij Nederland he used the pseudonym Piet Grijs and between 1979 and 1986 in de Volkskrant he used the pseudonym Stoker. Other pseudonyms include Battus (in NRC Handelsblad and Vrij Nederland), Raoul Chapkis, Victor Baarn, Dolf Cohen, Maaike Helder, Peter Malenkov and Talisman.
The Battus name is reserved for writing on linguistics and language play, in columns, articles, and books. Many forms of word play (palindromes, the longest attested word in Dutch, e-less Dutch, etc. etc.) were bundled in the volume Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde, ("Upperlandic linguistics", where "Upperlandic" is word play on "Netherlandic"), and twenty years later a sequel Opperlans! (deliberate misspelling). Both books are concerned with the form of Dutch words with little regard to meaning. He also wrote De Encyclopedie, a book parodying encyclopedias, containing about 300 pages numbered 1 through 40000 or thereabouts, with many puns, references to non-existent pages, and other jokes.
His daughter Aaf is a columnist and his son Jelle is also an author, and was a correspondent in Russia.