[1] Together with Willem Frederik Hermans and Harry Mulisch, he is considered one of the "Great Three" (De Grote Drie) of Dutch post-war literature.

Since the publication of Op weg naar het einde (Towards the end) (1963) and Nader tot U (Nearer to Thee) (1966), marking his breakthrough to a large audience, he articulated his views on God's creation and human fate, especially in the many collections of letters that he published.

These writings stress a symbolic, rather than ("...only the blind...") literal, understanding of religious texts as the only intellectually acceptable one, and the irrelevance of the Gospel's historical truth.

Philosophically, Reve was influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer, whose works he re-read every winter, and even more so by Carl Jung, according to a Dutch painter who spent some time with the author in France to paint several portraits of him.

Many doubted the sincerity of his conversion to Catholicism, although Reve remained adamant about the truthfulness of his faith, claiming his right to individual notions about religion and his personal experience of it.

One of Reve's main themes, along with religion and love, is his intense hatred of communism, its regimes and the tolerance toward it in leftist circles in the western world.

In 1975, he appeared at a Dutch poetry festival, wearing (among other things, a crucifix and peace symbol) a swastika as well as a hammer and sickle on his clothes, and read a poem that spoke of immigration in racist terms, though stressing cultural differences and using zwart (black) rather than neger/nikker (negro/nigger), in a solemn language that insulted many people, especially Afro-Surinamese, many of whom had arrived recently on the eve of the decolonization of Surinam that was to take place in November 1975.

In the face of a wave of criticism Reve did not move an inch, and his claims of being 'too intelligent to be a racist' and never wanting to inflict any harm on any racial grounds partly got lost in the confusion generated by his ever-present irony.

Like WF Hermans, he invited controversy by visiting South Africa in 1984 in defiance of a cultural boycott that was declared on that country because of its apartheid policy.

In 2001, he was awarded the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren, the most prestigious prize for Dutch-language authors, but King Albert II of Belgium refused to present it to him because his partner had been accused of pedophilia.

In 1980, Paul de Lussanet released the film Dear Boys (Lieve jongens), a comedy-drama starring Hugo Metsers, Hans Dagelet and Bill van Dijk.