Cees Nooteboom Books

Reading this book is like having a beautiful dream. Its one of the books I will never move without and I've read it over and over again.

Its a fairy tale but it is also an examination of why we tell fairy tales and the delicate importance of them in our lives.

Are you a recovering someone? In the Dutch Mountains is a spell-binding tale of love lost, redemption, and reconciliation. Cees Nooteboom weaves a story from the view of Tiburon, a Spanish engineer, in the same fashion that he presents his narrative of travels across central Spain in Roads to Santiago. A must read.

In the Dutch Mountains began as a story with the title The Snow Queen. It was intended to be filmed but the film was never made. Based on the Hans Christian Andersen story, it pays homage to Andersen openly.

The Snow Queen is one of Andersen's most remarkable tales; a plea for the precious uniqueness of childhood, an appeal against the premature induction of the child into rationality. Little Kai is stolen by the Snow Queen and kept captive in her castle in the cold and snowy North. His faithful playmate, Gerda goes in search of him and after many adventures and tribulations she arrives, borne on the back of a reindeer, at the Snow Queen's great hall of ice.

Here, she finds Kai, blue with cold, playing an endless solitary game, trying to fit shards of ice together like puzzle pieces. Gerda's warm tears melt the ice around Kai's heart and he is freed from the Snow Queen's spell.

In Nooteboom's version, Kai and Gerda become Kai and Lucia, a beautiful, happy couple who share a life and make a living as illusionists for the theater. In their act, Kai blindfolds Lucia and holds up an object before her, which she then "sees." This couple is of one mind and their serene perfection is continually compared to the reunited halves of a self that, as in the fable of Plato's Symposium, has been split in two.

This happiness and oneness arouses the jealousy of a mysterious femme fatale, who has Kai kidnapped and whisked off to her own castle. There she keeps him in thrall, obliterating his memories of Lucia while subjecting him to her lust. For this coldly beautiful mistress, Kai feels a mixture of both fear and desire.

Near the end of this story the novelist-narrator, who by this point is indistinguishable from Nooteboom, himself, gets entangled in a debate about truth and fiction tinged with shades of Plato, Milan Kundera and Hans Christian Andersen. "Why," asks the narrator, "do I have this irrepressible desire to fictionalize, to tell lies?" "From unhappiness," answers Andersen. "But you are not unhappy enough. That's why you can't bring it off."

This is the most penetrating self-insight in this novel, which, like the rest of Nooteboom's fiction, is as much about its own processes and raisons d'être as it is about the fictitious activities of its characters. Despite contortions of self-reflexiveness that in another writer (Samuel Beckett, for instance) might give rise to agonies of the spirit, Nooteboom and his narrator-atavars seem far too urbane, too cosmopolitan and too much at home in the world to genuinely suffer. This is Nootebooms particular affliction as a writer: perhaps he is just too intelligent, too sophisticated, too cool, to be able to commit himself to the grand illusion of fiction.

At one of its most reflexive levels, Nooteboom's fiction has, of necessity, been about a search for a level of emotion that can be carried over undiminished into literary creativity. In the Dutch Mountains, Andersen's diagnosis turns out to be correct: for all the wit, for all the insight into self and its fictions, for all the elegance of style, there is finally just not enough raw emotion to drive the story forward.

This novel has all traits of Cees Nooteboom's oeuvre - a lot of ideas, concepts and insights compressed in a slim volume, several levels of narrative, exquisite composition, excellent language (kudos also to translator).But some enigmatic quality of story makes its gist elusive and even criptic and any interpretation only relative. It is a fairy tale told by Alfonso Tiburon, a Spanish engineer, so we have at least two levels of narrative: a fairy tale per se and some thoughts of its author concerning literature and life. Both levels are rather uncomplicated apart: retold 'Snow Queen' with addition of Plato's concept of androgynes and some facts of Triburon's life with addition of his literary and philosophical opinions. The mystery appears when you peruse both levels simultaneously, and here Cees Nooteboom is at his best. Tiburon starts his tale with perfect beauty and perfect happiness (a perfect man Kai, a perfect woman Lucia and their perfect love) and promises to finish it with them. The beginning of the fairy tale resembles Andersen's story: Kai is abducted by Snow Queen, Lucia undertakes his quest. But this story 'happened not so very long ago' and the world seriously changed since Andersen's days. Today 'Snow Queen' is just a nickname of mob female bellwether, today perfect people can't keep their innocence and perfection any more. Kai becomes a silent lover of his cool mistress and, at the same time, a chauffeur during gang inroads. All this is at least motivated and justified by his painful eye. Lucia falls a prey to some lecherous wandering preacher and achieves a total blank in his embraces without any intrusion of splinted glass. But a fairy tale has its own laws that differ it from a real life. Some external events but not internal fortitude mend the situation. And now Lucia recommences her search leaving behind her new lover. A feeble ghost of Andersen's courageous heroine, she only dreams of robbers, of reindeer, of a girl with a knife. Happy end is a law of fairy tales: Kai and Lucia reunites again but where are promised perfect beauty and perfect happiness. The happy 'ever after' exists only in words (or in longing) but not in reality. There were love lost and some kind of reconciliation. But there was no real redemption and so there is no real perfection. Is a human being so weak today, is he/she powerless to face the evil of the world? In last chapter Tiburon recalls his childhood, the time when a child sees 'the brave new world' without its shortcomings. And previously, somewhere in the middle of the novel, he told us that the author who writes fairy tales distorts reality. 'It is, after all, possible that distortions may make something clear about form'. Nooteboom's opinion concerning modern world is far from optimistic. But nevertheless he believes that Kai and Lucia can be happy together after their ordeal. But a way to new perfect happiness will not be so short and easy as it was in the fairy tale. A wonderful novel!

The intersecting journeys of travellers and their reasons for travel, reflections on life, literature and cultural difference are some of the themes explored in this novel.

What do Alma and Erik, whose first encounter is in Australia, have in common? From what are they each escaping, and what impact will their journeys and destinations have on their futures?

`Angels do not exist and yet they are divided into orders much like the hierarchy in an army.'

This compact, beautifully written novel demonstrates how it is possible to write effectively and economically while exploring complex themes. This is a book to treasure. It is also the first book of Mr Nooteboom's I have read and I will be looking for English translations of his other works.

I recommend this novel highly.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Cees Nooteboom is one of the most accomplished and celebrated novelists in Europe. I've waited three years for LOST PARADISE to be translaetd and published here in the US, and now novel has arrived. With all of its post-modernist touches, LOST PARADISE is at its heart simply an interesting story that somehow manages to bring off a meditational feel for looming topics such as spirituality, sexuality, aging, and creativity. There are two main characters, each dominating one half of the book. Alma is a young woman from Sao Paolo who goes to Australia to escape the memory of a rape. She tells the first half of the story. Zontag is an aging Dutch literary critic who goes to a German fat farm to get back in shape. How their lives intersect is a focal point. Through the perspective of Zontag, Nooteboom has some fun with the business of literature -- and the unnamed narrator of the second half of the book even mentions "Nooteboom" as a greying novelist whose moves are all but known by now! I don't want to spoil the plot for you, so all I'll add is Nooteboom has followed up his earlier novel THE FOLLOWING STORY with another gem. I read a good article on LOST PARADISE at the online literary site www.ronslate.com.

I don't really know what to think about this short novel.

The three main characters seem to have such different lives.

Inni Wintrop, a poor boy from a rich Catholic family, inherits from his aunt a substantial sum that should have rightfully gone to his father. This allows him to drift through life, investing in stocks and seducing women. The book is divided into sections so we are allowed to see Inni in his 30's almost commit suicide when his wife leaves him for an Italian magazine photographer. But we are also allowed to see Inni in his 20's seducing and seduced by a serving girl and then in his 40's seducing and seduced by a girl he meets in a city park over a dead dove. These casual sexual encounters, along with dialogue with learned friends and art dealers, and checking in with this stock brokers seem to make up the ritual of Inni's life. His one strength is that he is captive of only a few compulsions and he whereas he is no great humanitarian or egoist, he at least does not hate mankind as does Arnold Taads or hate himself as does Philip Taads.

Arnold Taads is an outdoorsman, world traveler, skier, mountain climber, philosopher, and hater of his fellow human beings. Though he twice refers to Spinoza, Taads' can not be said to follow Spinoza's philosophy. Taads has made nature his God and thus humanity becomes Evil. His dislike for humanity thus infects his own self perception and he eventually dies of exposure to snow, which appears to really be a suicide. Arnold seems obsessed with time and schedule, organizing his life around his physical and intellectual activities and his dog rather than human interactions.

Then, 20 years later, we are introduced to an Indonesian man who is Arnold Taat's son with an Indonesian woman. Phillip Taats also has removed himself from humanity, exploring the contemplative life of a Zen monk in his barren apartment. Phillip has studied the great raku artists who developed vessels for the tea ceremony. He eventually buys a rare and beautiful vessel and performs a tea ceremony for his friend who owns an Asian antiquity gallery and for Immi. We then learn that Philip has committed suicide by drowning himself. When Bernard Roozenboom and Immi Wintrop enter his apartment, they find the vessel has been shattered.

What in the world does all this mean, you may ask? For me this small parable has to do with connectedness to the human condition and the search for meaning. Both Arnold and Philip have divorced themselves from human interaction and particularly human commitment. They seek meaning in solitude, God exists in nature and esthetics but not in the human condition (where I personally think God resides).

Well then, who is Immi? He is a driftless soul with no external reason for existance other than to make love to women and spend his inheritance, yet he has one charm, one grace, one protection against the void - Immi is open to possibility and relationship. He hangs by a thread but he still survives.

Cees Noteboom is one of the two best Dutch writers, ranking among the most important writers of fiction of our era. "Rituals" is perhaps his finest work, the translator the best of all those who have translated Dutch. As in "Notes from the Unground" (better title: "Cries from Under the Floor") by Dostoyesky, it is comprised of two very different halves which form a complete unity at completion. A character study, an obsession, a revelation of a culture combine to raise issues of identity, familial, cultural, and ancestoral The pivotal ritual is of a Japanese Tea ceremony rare in practice and revaltory in this book which can be appreciated at many levels while leading to philosophical and moral contemplation. The story moves smoothly, naturally increasing in tension into a dramatic and surpising end which in retrospect is inevitable No one will leave this book without new insights, perspectives, and resonnating images, ideas, and questions which will linger and illuminate the novel on reflaction.

The novel reads like a cross between Perec's Things & A Man Asleep and Camus' Outsider. Beautifully written and quite comical for those of similar headspace, the novel also has some outstanding passages destined to bring a smile to the faces of the (non-devotedly) 'discontent'. It is a wonderful picture of late 20th Century man and shines as true literature in a literary world populated by Houellebecq drivel.

This book gives you something to chew on on every level. The prose is good, (the English translation can not capture some of the idiosyncrasies of Dutch, but is very good overall) right from its opening sentence "The day Inni Wintrop committed suicide, Philips shares stood ..." All of the characters in the book are memorable and wonderfully sketched. (As an introverted person, I'm always amused by the walk through the woods scene. Taats asks Inni a question which spurs a two-page train of thought, but he answers only in a mono-syllable.) And it goes up to the structure of the book: the first of the 3 parts is called "Intermezzo". Plenty of ideas here.

Unfortunately, there are many writers who have talent, but no subject to write about. So they turn to fashionable fads and the emptiness of life to create stories so absurd and pointless that the reader (unless he or she shares that same emptiness) leaves out totally... well, empty. The only reason I'm giving this book two stars is because, as I said, Noteboom can write, and because there are several clever and even bright sentences in the book. The subject seems to be the Death of God in modern life, and it is an interesting one, only the author should have written a philosophical essay instead of a narrative.

Inni Wintrop is a lonely man totally estranged from his family. One day an aunt arrives and introduces him to an ex-lover, a man also estranged from his family and from the world. This man has a very cheap, infantile, Greenpeace-like anti-human environmental "philosophy". This man has replaced God with Nature and a neurotical daily schedule. Years later, Inni meets the man's son, an Indonesian who pathetically follows each and every oriental New Age philosophy (until he commits suicide).

In the first chapter, entitled "Interlude", the author tells us the story of how Inni lost his wife, because he got to bed with other women and never paid any attention to her (strange, so, that she leaves him).

That's the book, disconnected clever musings about how God doesn't exist and how lonely we are in this cold world. No character is deep or likable in the least, there is no plot nor conflict nor anything but the repulsive contemplation of people with nothing to do but gaze at their navels and look for stupid rituals to supplant God. None of them even have real jobs.

Herman Musset, a quiet, introverted teacher of Latin and Greek, and who spends all of his time reading. He writes travel guides under the name of Dr Strabo, and calls it 'a moronic activity whereby I earn my living'. In his spare time - when he is not reading - he translates Ovid's Metamorphosis, a translation he wants nobody to see because, 'Our modern languages are altogether too wordy...the traffic jam, the jumble of words, blathering chaos.'

He falls asleep one night in his home in Amsterdam, and awakens in Lisbon, twenty years previous. He is unsure if he is dead, or has been transported back through time, or whether he is hallucinating. Or, maybe, some other possibility that he cannot imagine. All he knows is that the room he woke up in, the room in Lisbon, is the very same place where he slept with another man's wife.

In waking up in this room, he remembers the actions of all those years ago and the people that were affected. Lisa d'India, a talented, beautiful student, he remembers the best. She was loved by all for her intelligence, loved by Herman for the ideal she represented. He admired her, appreciated her skill with Greek, but he did not love her in the carnal sense, the way every else seemed to. For Herman, sexual love '[has] more to do with the animal kingdom than with human beings, who concern themselves with the less tangible aspects of existence.'

Lisa d'India is loved, most especially, by Arend Herfst, a poet and basketball teacher. He begins a relationship with the girl, and it seems that everyone but Herman is aware of this. Arend's wife, Maria Zeinstra, begins an affair with Herman, an affair of revenge, not love or lust, and Herman is completely unaware of this fact. Happily, the plot never moves into confusing betrayals or empty, 'romantic' gestures. Instead, we follow the events through the absent-minded, bewildered eyes of Herman. His affair with Maria Zeinstra, an affair that he did not plan and did not really want, is somewhat beyond his talents in people interaction. He does not know how to handle her, and luckily, does not have to. Herman is used merely as a piece in the strategy game that husband and wife are playing. Yet, Maria's relationship with Herman is not malicious, as far as we can tell, and is oftentimes quite gentle.

The clandestine cum love story plot is one that can easily be ignored, and indeed is for most of the novel. The true focus is Herman. He is an amazing character, a learned, intelligent, gentle man, who is 'as ugly as Socrates'. He quotes Ovid, Tacitus and Shakespeare in his meandering confessions, he considers this philosophy or that author, wonders about the state of art and culture, comments on everything with a wry wink to the reader. Herman is a man who enjoys words more than anything else in this world, he enjoys reading them and - while he considers his own talents to be of a poor quality, and useless when compared to the Latin and Greek greats - he loves writing down his thoughts. Through the sarcasm and the negativity towards popular culture, there is a timid yet kind man who just wants to love his books in peace.

An explanation for Herman's sleeping in Amsterdam and awakening in Lisbon twenty years earlier is given, but I will not reveal it. Towards the end of the novel, when Herman has relived the most vivid, alive experience of his life, when he has finished recounting an episode when the real world intrudes on his careful, closed existence of words and rhyme, he boards a ship, travelling with six other people, swapping dream-like stories of time and reality. In this section, the sardonic, witty narrator - Herman - all but disappears, replaced with a lazily beautiful chronicler of events of the mind. The transition is seamless and works very well, building up a sort of confused, dreamy tension until the last two amazing pages, and then the final, perfect sentence when the cloud of unanswered questions are blown away and we are left with a brilliant clarity and understanding.

A friend told me, because I love Jim Harrison, Milorad Pavic', and Walker Percy, that I must read Cees Nooteboom. I bought "The Following Story". I can't explain this book. Van Morrison meets Rilke. Tom Waits meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Bruce Cockburn meets Larry Brown. This mysterious and deeply touching tale reaches heights most only dream of. It is a story of love, questions, regret, hope, death, and desire.

Vivillo

This is the first book by a dutch author I have read, and its excellence has led me to think that this nation is unfairly neglected. This book had many beautiful moments, and was, as far as I could tell, superbly translated.

The story starts few minutes before death of Herman Mussert, a teacher of classical languages, and ends few minutes after his death. In this short period of time we learn all the important events of his life. The story is just like a journey to the eternity. It begins in Amsterdam, where Herman is dying of heart attack. It continues in Portugal, where he wakes up and remembers the things happened here years ago that were very important for all his life. The last part of the journey is a journey with the ship over the ocean to the origin of the river Amazon. This is the last part of the journey and it is where the eternity begins.

This is also a story of two men and two women, or three teachers and one student. This is a story of love and jealousy or love and revenge. The very important thing in this book is a relationship between materialistic world of science with all his natural principals, and spirituality. The last moments of life are just the right ones to think about the connection between them.

The novel is very short. In some way, it is cyclic and written in such a way that at the end the reader has a feeling that the story is beginning not ending. But there is already the time for a following story - the story of the next traveller on the journey to the eternity.

I've come across this book quite inadvertently (or serendipitously taking into account the results)attracted by its European Literary Prize. But from the first page I was fascinated by this literary masterpiece of previously unknown (for me) author. It is a love story dressed in apparel of modern psychology and philosophy, overwhelming beautiful and devastatingly sad, absolutely devoided of schmaltz. This incredibly succinct book includes stupendous magnitude of contemplations and reflections, metaphors and symbols, images and emotions. Its composition is perfect - from humorous observations of ostentatious misanthrope nonplussed by extraordinary awaking in a memorable place to the pinnacle of genuine understanding of human tragedy of classical scope where jealousy and vengeance generate distorted passion and destroy real love. Its language is exquisite, the language of the sincere poet. It is the book which you'll want to reread when the last phrase still reverberates in your mind. It is one of the best books I've ever read, chef d'oeuvre of intelligent, perspicacious and generous author.

Arthur Daane is a documentary maker, a camera operator, and a lonely man. His wife and child, who died years earlier, haunt his waking life. He has a solid group of friends, a rag-tag trio of intellectuals who do their best to keep up his spirits, but as with all people suffering from the demons associated with the death of loved ones, their best can never be enough. So, he travels about Europe, working for commission when he needs the money, spending time on his personal project when he does not. He walks, he thinks, he remembers.

Soon, however, a new presence enters Arthur's life. She is Elik, a young Ph.D. student studying an obscure twelfth century Spanish queen. He is attracted to her mystery, she is attracted to his silence. A romance begins, one that is confusing to them both.

And that, in a nutshell, is the entire novel. Nooteboom writes at a leisurely pace, allowing Arthur to ponder all manner of philosophical and cultural problems. A walk for Arthur is not merely a walk - it is nearly an essay, with statues inspiring history, trees inspiring philosophy, dogs inspiring memory. Generally, Arthur's thought connections are interesting and relevant however, they often seem more padding than anything else.

The first hundred or so pages of the novel occupy themselves with Arthur's journey around Berlin, his current residence. While he walks, he remembers snippets of conversation with his friends Victor, Arno and Zenobia, these isolated items of character-building a prelude to a meeting at their favourite restaurant. Unfortunately, his three closest friends - the absent Erna notwithstanding - function more as mouthpieces for Nooteboom, rather than as characters in their own right. Conversations, when the occur, are punctuated with random facts that serve to link topics together, allowing the author to dazzle us with his varied and wide-ranging intellect. This is fine, except that Arthur's friends never progress beyond this fact-serving. They are stilted, because all they can be are repositories of knowledge. We are left to wonder why Arthur wants to be around them, and why they would want to be around him. A fine example comes from an early conversation between Arno and Victor:

'How on earth can you people call it cheese?'

'Luther, Hildegard von Bingen, Jakob Bohme, Novalis, and Heidegger have all eaten this cheese,' Arno said. 'The penetrating ordor that you smell is the German version of eternity. And the translucent substance that you see, with the dull sheen of candle wax, might very well represent the mystical heart of my beloved Vaterland.'

All very fine, but their conversations never progress beyond this babble of knowledge swapping. Are we expected to believe that there are people who talk like this? And if they have been eating at the same restaurant for years, surely Arno would not lambast the table with this nugget of information upon arriving at the cheese dish? It all smacks of a writer writing the scene, rather than people living in it. A shame, considering Nooteboom's obvious intelligence.

When the femme fatale, Elik, enters the story, the novel shifts focus. At first, we are led to believe that the plot will follow the ordinary, 'mysterious alluring woman' cliche, but it does not. No, almost immediately after Elik is introduced, we are allowed into her mind through a point-of-view section, and this dispels a large amount of her artificial mystery. A lesser novel would collapse once the shroud of the female has lifted, but if anything, All Souls' Day thrives. Elik and Arthur are dancers performing to a song they can't hear, with movements they don't know. We are led to believe that as confusing Arthur finds Elik, so to is Elik baffled by Arthur.

A large focus of the novel is the way history portrays us, and how we portray it. Elik immerses herself in a period of history that is so small, and so focused, that it is difficult for others to appreciate the reason for studying it in such detail. But isn't our own small slice of history just as irrelevant, ultimately? What claim can we have on the future, one hundred years from now, let alone a thousand? Coupled with these intriguing ideas comes the question of German guilt following World War II. Clearly, Berlin is a land steeped in history - some of it good, some of it not. Can we look at Hitler and the Holocaust as merely history? Nooteboom argues through his characters that we cannot, yet surely in a thousand years, that is exactly what scholars will be doing. How can we expect the future to be as affected as we are, on an event that to them, will have infinitely less relevance and impact? An unsettling idea, but one that is virtually unavoidable once presented.

There is beauty. A scene where Elik dances in an underground rave club, is moving in its horror. His description is note perfect, and shows clearly how someone away from that scene might interpret the clashing music: 'She seemed to know them, to assume a different voice, a kind of shout to be heard above the music, heavy metal, the sound of a factory producing nothing but noise, pounding figures on a dance floor, slave laborers working on an absent product, contorted bodies moving in time to a merciless beat, writhing with every lash of the whip, screaming along with what they seemed to recognise as words, a German chorus from Hell, raw voices scraped over jagged iron, poisonous metal.' This is, to my mind, a compelling interpretation of a chaotic scene. Other descriptions throughout are equally impressive, showing that when Nooteboom shifts out of pedagogic mode, he is more than capable of producing narrative gold.

Elik is an unsettling character. No, it is more than that - she is unpleasant. Even when we are allowed into her mind, it is difficult to sympathise. Yes, we appreciate her quest to learn all there is to know about Queen Urraca, but can we also appreciate her alternately hostile and baffling treatment of Arthur? We can't, and the novel suffers. We also cannot easily sympathise with Arthur's growing obsession, because of Nooteboom's intellectual distancing act. Because conversations as well as thoughts are so filled with information and philosophising that while interesting, adds little to the characters and indeed detracts from them, we just can't care enough about who is doing what and why.

I just finished reading this book and cannot recommend it enough. It is a sort of novel of ideas that encompasses traditional German philosophy as well as more modern issues. The story and characters are strong, and the portrayal of Berlin as an historical but ever-changing city is dead-on. This novel is longer than most of Nooteboom's others, but just as good a starting place if you're unfamiliar with his books.

This novel develops in a much slower, traditional way than Nooteboom's other novels but this slowness is appropriate for the subject matter. The strength of this novel is the incredible way Nooteboom through words, allows us to see the world as Arthur sees it - he processes visual images not words or logical formulations. We are drawn into his experience of verbal overload, of stumbling to say in words what is known in visual or aural images.

The second success of the novel is it's accurate portrayal of a specific intellectual time - Hegel, Camus, Volans, Pedereski, Hildegard ... it was so familar as to be eerie ... for the novel Berlin with Dutch, German, Russian individuals. And yet in some strange way the same as my college days in rural Wisconsin with students from Uganda, Honduras ... In some way Nooteboom has captured the intellectual life of an era and successfully made it universal.

Throughout the novel - verbally and by plot - the volume addresses the issue of history - personal, recent, and ancient. The juxtaposition of Arthur's visual record of history, of his friend's intellectual understanding and of his "girl friend's" archival search for history is effective at forcing the reader to think. Often this is done by small details - a statue that fallen still has a cap in place where a real cap would have fallen off, the timeless sound of conches in Japanese monasteries, the sound of tires on wet pavement ...

This is a novel that challenges the way you perceive the world rather than simply presenting the challenge that Arthur is facing. Arthur having lost wife and child in an airplane accident is forced to reevaluate his world. The novel says the rest of us should do so without a prod like Arthur's.

Spain becomes grist for the cracked mill wheel of Cees Nooteboom's mind. The book isn't really about Spain, it's about the author and his obsessive fixation with certain Spanish topics. He does this with painfully long rambling descriptions of various Spanish cultural icons that have caught his attention, drilling down to the time when they first caught his attention and the many times since then that he has pondered them. The topics themselves are interesting but almost irrelevant to the self indulgent dredging of the author's own mind. You would learn more hard facts about these topics from a museum brochure. The twin pillars of this tortuously slow moving narrative are the painter Zurban and Romanesque architecture. He drops and picks up these topics at random, throughout the book, and prattles on about them as if he is possessed with a reoccurring fever. He also slathers his book with an impressive amount of trite clichés about Spain, Spain the land of contrasts, Castille La Mancha the land of desolate panoramas, etc. He goes on ad nauseum. He also plays a little fast and loose with the few historical facts he deigns to use. He states that the aqueduct in Segovia was used until 1974; according to Segovia's municipal web site it is still in use. He states that Pizzaro left from Extremadura with an invasion force for Peru; Pizzaro left from Central America where he had been established for some years. Obviously no fact checker touched this book before publication. There are many wonderful books about Spain. This isn't one of them.

first of all, cees nooteboom is a shining oasis in the arid intellectual desert of contemporary travel writing, and secondly, you should let go of everything that makes you unhappy, and set sail tomorrow.

the sheer profundity and wit of nooteboom's observations left me, for one, in like total dumbstruck awe, and his seemingly divine ability to translate the most visceral of emotions into words (a medium of communication i had always, up till now, considered inferior) made me feel a little bit the same way i felt the first time i went skydiving. folks, this here is a man who knows how to travel, as well as being a freakin miracle of a writer--and anyone who is capable of firing a sincere philosophic-type synapse will LOVE HIM. also read "the following story," all you existential types out there--he's like a dreamy, colorful Camus, and his prose will make your eyes feel clean for the first time in years.

Am still trying to finish this book! Compared to some of the others on the subject, it's a hard read. I'll probably sell it.

Very interesting view of selected Spanish history and culture. Superbly written. I have been reading lots of books from Spain and about Spain in the last 10 years, but this is certainly one of the best.

This is a spectacular book, written by the best kind of travel writer. Mr. Nooteboom's passion for Spain, Spanish art, and Spanish architecture is infectious. I did the pilgrimage to Santiago in September of 2003, and understanding the Camino in the larger context of Spanish history (which Mr. Nooteboom limns so admirably) was invaluable. I don't believe I would have looked for, much less appreciated the Romanesque architecture I saw along the way. Coincidentally, his love of the great Spanish painters Zurbaran and Velazquez inspired me to visit New York for the Velazquez to Manet exhibit. I consider this one of the essential books to read before you set out for Santiago de Compostela. Guide books will get you from A to B. This book will help you understand the importance of A, B, and all the points in between.