Auke Kok
Auke Kok
Auke Kok (b. 1956) is a journalist, non-fiction author and city chronicler for the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad. His previous books include The Traitor: The Life and Death of Anton van der Waals, 1974: We Were The Best, This Was Veronica: History of a Pirate, and 1988: We Loved Oranje. In 2016, he published 1936: We Went To Berlin and in 2019 a biography of Johan Cruijff, , which recently has been published in Spanish and will be published in English next year. Tough Guy is his first novel.
Recent title – English material
Flinke jongen (Tough Guy), 2021
Excerpt from Tough Guy:
If we had stayed in that ordinary house, in the middle of a row, everything would have gone differently. Wedged in and no way out: it was maybe the best thing for us. But we left and went to live in a big, strange house, on the other side of the tracks in a village. This house, free-standing, my mom says with emphasis, has windows on all sides. Sometimes I think it’s how everything that used to be good crawled out, flew away between the high trees and thatched roofs.