Hugh Cook was a cult author whose works blend fantasy and science fiction. He is best known for his epic series The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness.
After spending his early childhood in England, he moved to Ocean Island (now Banaba Island in Kiribati). His experiences of English castles and of life on an equatorial island later influenced his writing. He moved to, and was educated in New Zealand. His first novel, Plague Summer was published when he was 24 in 1980.
Between 1986 and 1992 he wrote the ten-novel series The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. In 1997 he moved to Japan, and lived in Yokohama with his wife and daughter and taught English.
In 2005 he underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer in the form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He wrote a medical memoir, Cancer Patient, telling of this experience.
Following a relapse, Hugh Cook died on 8 November 2008, in the hospice in Auckland.
