Ken Hall died on the operating table at the Royal Brisbane Children's Hospital when he was eight years old. This resulted in damage to his brain. Doctors recommended he not be sent back to school.
Hall says: 'Before this time my schooling and learning was normal for my age. I learnt to spell words like "and", "but", "me", "to" and "cat", but not "mouse" as that word was not taught in that year. "Mouse" to me even today is much too big for me to spell without help. For some reason reading and writing words cut off at the age of eight. I can still remember what I was taught before this time. I can remember other things like what I was doing and where I was. That's easy, I see my life as a movie and the sounds I heard at that time, it's like music or the noises at that time fit in with the event. The older I get the more movies I have in my head. So to write my story with the written word is very hard, to read it is harder, and to write What Next You Bastard took sixteen years.'
At twelve years of age, he was moved from the children's ward to the terminal adult ward, where he lived each day surrounded by dying old men. In spite of doctors' insistence that he would not reach adulthood, he survived. However, he then had to make his way in a world in which illiteracy is deemed idiocy. When he met Monika McFerran (q.v.), they worked together to write the story of his life.
(Source: Adapted from a letter from the author and the author's webpage at http://what-next-you-bastard.com/Books.htm sighted 26/1/2010)
