Jan Wolkers, 81; author took on Netherlands’ postwar conservatism

Jan Wolkers, 81, a Dutch author and sculptor whose sex-charged books helped shake off the shackles of postwar conservatism in the Netherlands, died Friday at his home on the North Sea island of Texel, his publisher De Bezige Bij announced.

Considered one of the most important postwar Dutch writers, Wolkers won but declined the country’s highest literary honors. Among his best-known novels was “Turkish Delight” (1969), which has been translated into a dozen languages and was made into an Oscar-nominated 1973 film.

Wolkers’ books focused on breaking with a strict Protestant upbringing, lust, life, loss and death. Two other books, “Crew Cut” and “Back to Oegstgeest,” were also made into movies.

Wolkers studied painting in Leiden at the end of World War II and sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art in Amsterdam.

Starting in the 1980s, he concentrated on sculpting and created a memorial to Holocaust victims in Amsterdam -- a bed of shattered mirrors covered with glass in a small park.

Lloyd Nelson Trotman, who played the bass line on the 1961 Ben E. King hit “Stand By Me” and hundreds of other hit records in a career that spanned seven decades, died of pneumonia Oct. 3 in Huntington, N.Y. He was 84.