Roberto van Eyken was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1951 and raised in the United States near Washington D.C. He attended the College of William and Mary and, after graduation, taught English in Cameroon, West Africa, for three years with the United States Peace Corps. Upon returning to the U.S. after a year of traveling in Africa and Asia, van Eyken settled in California and became a journalist, a profession he pursued for nearly two decades. In 2000, he switched professions and became a high school teacher. He taught English literature until he retired in 2020 to devote himself full-time to translating. Van Eyken regards translating as something of a mission, stemming from a prediction by his mother (Vieira’s daughter) more than half a century ago: “You will be the one to translate your grandfather’s books”.

Van Eyken lives in West Sacramento, California with his wife Michéle. The two of them enjoy theater and concerts, as well as outdoor activities such as hiking, bicycling and camping. The couple have two grown children, one of whom, their daughter Christi, lives only a mile from their home in West Sacramento. Their son Joshua also lives relatively nearby, in San Francisco. Roberto and Michéle live half the year in California and the other half at their apartment in the city of Porto, in northern Portugal.