He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature fifteen times.

[1] Born in the small Frisian town of Harlingen, Vestdijk studied medicine in Amsterdam, but turned to literature after a few years as a doctor, including some time on board a ship.

[2] During the German occupation, he and other Dutch intellectuals were held hostage in Kamp Sint-Michielsgestel for some time, partly because they did not want to join the Chamber of Culture.

Vestdijk struggled with severe depressions from his youth, and until the end of his life.

His prolificness as a novelist was legendary (poet Adriaan Roland Holst saying of him that "he writes quicker than God can read"), but he was at least as important as an essayist on e.g., literature, religion, art, and music in particular.