In 2020, he won the Brusse Prize for best journalistic book in the Dutch language with Liever dier dan mens,[1] a book translated into English as: Hiding in Plain Sight: How a Jewish girl survived Europe’s heart of darkness.
[2] For the same book, Van Os won the prestigious Dutch Libris History Prize.
Pieter van Os grew up in Groningen and studied the history of political thought in Minneapolis, Leiden and Barcelona.
In 2014 he moved to Poland to be with his wife Guusje Korthals Altes (born 1972), a Dutch diplomat.
[5] A critic of Dutch Daily De Volkskrant wrote about the book: In almost every sentence, van Os compels admiration with his elegant prose, demonstrating his erudition but never showing off or taking away from the gravity of the subject matter … Hiding in Plain Sight is more than a survival narrative.