Hendrik Groen (Author)
Hendrik Groen chooses to be an anonymous author to highlight social inequality. He started his diaries on the literary website of Torpedo magazine.

Hester Velmans (Translator)
Hester Velmans is the author of two popular children's novels and a translator specializing in modern fiction. Her translation of Renate Dorrestein's A Heart of Stone won the Vondel Prize for Translation and was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her translation of Lulu Wang's The Lily Theater was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her children's book Isabel of the Whales now has a sibling: the second in the Whales Series, Jessaloup's Song (age 10 and up).

The hilarious international bestselling novel that has had pensioners ditching their sticks and zimmers to follow the age-defying, youth inducing antics inside The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 ¼ Years Old . . .

'Terrific. This geriatric Adrian Mole made me laugh' Woman and Home

'Funny and touching' BBC Radio 4

Meet Hendrik Groen. An octogenarian in a care home who has no intention of doing what he's told, or dying quietly. To that end, he creates the Old-But-Not-Dead Club and with his fellow members sets about living his final years with careless abandon. Such anarchism infuriates the care home director but pleases Eefje, the woman who makes Hendrik's frail heart palpitate. If it's never too late to have fun, then can it ever be too late to meet the love of your life?


'So much more than just a comedy' John Boyne

'A story with a great deal of heart' Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project

'Amusing and wickedly accurate. A handbook of resistance for our time.' Sunday Express

'Very funny' Jeremy Paxman Financial Times