Rebel, rebel

When Jack fell into a canal when he was four years old and unable to swim, he tried to move towards the sun, and when that didn’t work, he thought, “Never mind, Jack, let it go. Life is a bitch.” But then he’s rescued, and when he gets home his stepfather beats him up. As usual. 
Swallowing a jar of red ink before you go to sleep is not the most successful way to commit suicide, Jack finds out, but when it comes down to it, Jack doesn’t want to die. He just wants to stop living. 
At the age of thirteen Jack delivers speeches about war and peace, first to his peers, later on national radio, and he decides its time to leave the country and discover the world. He lives in Hamburg, Cologne, Napels, Ischia, Genoa, Nice and Paris. 
Jack is fifteen when his friend David (16) gets killed in the Six-Day War. 

Dutch writer and painter Jan Cremer is Jack’s role model since he was eleven. He wants to do everything Jan Cremer has done, or claims to have done, and more. He is nineteen when he buys a house in the Red Light District, twenty when he starts studying political science in Moscow, and twenty-four when he receives his master's degree after internships in Ireland and South Africa.