Joris was born in Belgium. After a year of studying psychology in Leuven and two years in the United States, working as an au pair and exploring the country, Joris settled in the Netherlands where she studied journalism at the School of Journalism in Utrecht. She worked for several Dutch newspapers and magazines and debuted as a writer with De Golf. In 1985 she travelled to the former Belgian colony of Congo, where her great-uncle had been a missionary. Congo became a recurring theme in her work, leading successively to Terug naar Congo, Dans van de luipaard, Het uur van de rebellen and De hoogvlaktes. The Rebels' Hour was nominated for the T.R. Fyvel Book Award. The Daily Telegraph called it "an intelligent and at times beautiful reckoning of one of the great human dramas of our age", Philip Gourevitch selected it in The New Yorker as one of four essential books on Rwanda and the French dailyLibération hailed her as "one of the best journalists in the world". The French edition of The High Plains was awarded the Prix Nicolas Bouvier. An excerpt of this book was published in the winter 2009 issue of The Paris Review For Mali Blues, the account of her travels through Senegal, Mauritania and Mali, Joris received the Belgian Triennial award for Flemish prose and the French Prix de l’Astrolabe 1999. Joris has also written several books about the Middle East. After her debut The Gulf she published Een kamer in Cairo and De poorten van Damascus. In 2010 Mijn Afrikaanse telefooncel was published, short stories about Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe – the three focus points of Joris’ work. Years after her first trip to Congo, Joris became interested in the relationship between Africa and China. For her book Op de vleugels van de draak, Joris travelled between Africa and China, immersing herself in the world of Africans and Chinese who venture into each other's territory in the slipstream of big business contracts. In 2014 Lieve Joris was awarded the Spiegelprijs for her Africa-books and the VPRO Bob den Uyl Prijs for On The Wings of The Dragon. "She went behind the scenes of globalization and discovered a world of which we don't have a clue," the French weekly L'Express wrote. wrote. The French daily Libération called it "the intimate traces of her itineraries and pursuits". Joris' books have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Catalan, Norwegian, Hungarian and Polish. She currently lives in Amsterdam.
