Belgian novelist known for his novels about crucial public events written chiefly in a bold, direct style free of textual and philosophical complexity.

Mertens is an international lawyer who remains a prominent figure in Belgian literary life. His first novel, L'Inde ou l'Amérique (1969; “India or America”), recaptures memories of a disillusioned and alienated childhood, as does the more elaborate La Fête des anciens (1971; “The Feast of the Ancients”). An autobiographical tone also marks his short story collections, Le Niveau de la mer (1970; “Sea Level”) and the sarcastic Nécrologies (1977; “Necrologies”). A soon-to-be familiar theme of defeat in public and private life emerges in his third novel, Les Bons Offices (1974; “The Good Offices”), a satire on Western intellectualism in which his Belgian hero Sanchotte, a Cervantean hybrid, finds himself caught between Europe and the Middle East. Terre d'asile (1978; “Land of Refuge”) is a rich, flowing metatext about the experiences of a Chilean refugee on the Belgian coast.

In 1976 Mertens helped launch the concept of “belgitude” in an issue of the French magazine, Nouvelles Littéraires. This well-intentioned but ultimately limited concept, which advocates a self-confident Belgian literary identity as opposed to one subordinated to France, succeeded in focusing fresh attention for a time on the history and breadth of Belgian literature.

Mertens's fundamental pessimism is evident in several of his later works, notably Les Éblouissements (1987; Shadowlight), which looks back to occupied Belgium in World War I; Lettres clandestines (1990), a brief meditation on the strengths of the novel as compared with biography; and Les Phoques de San Francisco (1991; “The Seals of San Francisco”). He published his first play, Flammes, in 1993. His novel Une Paix royale (1995; “A Royal Peace”) brought him several awards as well as a legal battle with Belgian royalty in France.