Bert Keizer

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Bert Keizer.

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 where he graduated from in 1981. Keizer then worked as a doctor in Kenya, and later in a nursing home in Amsterdam. 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 Het refrein is Hein, which was translated into English (by Keizer himself) as Dancing with Mr D. 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. While the topic of euthanasia and assisted suicide was the most salient point for the literary criticism, it is not a very large part of the book.