John B. Gieles was born in 1946 in Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany. His father was a man of striking contrasts: capable of great courage and deep affection, yet also of decisions that left the family fractured. After his parents divorced, John and his younger sister were placed in children’s homes at a very young age.
At the age of four, he was taken to a children’s home in Antwerp, from where his father dramatically abducted him in a pigeon basket. He subsequently spent thirteen years in residential institutions for children with behavioural difficulties and children of divorced parents.
After completing secondary school, John studied Social Psychology at the University of Nijmegen. He later built a 33-year career at a large psychiatric hospital in Venray, the Netherlands. He now lives in Heemskerk.
For many years, he dreamed of writing a screenplay. That dream eventually took a different form. The Fourth Gold Bar became an autofictional novel that, according to many readers, unfolds like a film. It combines historical suspense with a deeply emotional father-son story inspired by true events.
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