Born in Hengelo in the Netherlands to a Turkish father and a Dutch mother, he studied English literature at the University of Amsterdam and moved to the United States at age 20.
[1] De atlas van overal is a partly autobiographical novel in which the author searches for aspects of his father's life he never knew, particularly loss.
Kuypers' father was born in Turkey, and left for the Netherlands in the 1960s, leaving a wife and four living children behind.
In the Netherlands he started another family and had two children, but was a violent man, quick to anger.
One of the many barriers between father and son is language: the father barely speaks Dutch, and Kuypers did not speak Turkish.