Adé obtained his PhD in Romance philology at the Sorbonne in Paris and returned to his native city of Antwerp. Influenced by the "nouveau roman" that was all the rage at the time, and in the heyday of alternative forms of writing, Adé's first book: Het lichamelijk onderscheid (The Physical Distinction), became a challenge to the conventions that prevailed within the Dutch-language and primarily the so-called ' Flemish storytelling'.