Jack Pinto

Rebel, Rebel Jack Pinto

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 Northern Ireland and South Africa. Jack becomes head-chef on traditional sailing vessels with passengers, travels the world, comes to New York, where he lives in the Chelsea Hotel - another Jan Cremer box to tick - and works as a social worker for heroin addicts in Harlem. He returns to Holland, starts to work for the Ministry of Justice. As an editor/translator of non-fiction literature Jack works with authors such as Peter Arnett, Bob Woodward, Edward Radzinsky, Michael Lewis, Harrie Wu, Robert Hughes, and many other authors. He translates and edits the biographies of Czar Nicholas II, Stalin, Rasputin, Mata Hari, Markus Wolf, Michael Gorbatchev, Margaret Thatcher and Anatoli Karpov. Jack is 55 when he leaves everything behind and moves back to his beloved Nice. But that's not the end of the story...