Top 3 books by Cees Nooteboom

The most literate of the much-needed Hispanists who face the arduous task of understanding what none of us understand from within. Cees Noote Boomas Paul preston o Henry kamen, raises that condition of students of a history south of the Pyrenees (with permission from Portugal). But in the case of Cees, the thing is more fondness or perhaps strangeness and eagerness to know the madness and chaos of the Hispanic.

Because in the narrative, Cees Nooteboom is much more than his studies on bull hide, as is also much more his vital journey through places around the world in search of that residue of the writer convinced of the need to be a traveler before sitting down to tell something.

If travel literature is to be understood as a strictly narrative quality genre, it is largely because of this Dutch writer who achieved that alchemy between experiences and fiction of his travels around the world.

Cees Nooteboom's Top 3 Recommended Books

The detour to Santiago

Fair or not, the truth is that reading about something that one esteems in a special way predisposes one to greater recognition of any work. This Camino de Santiago free version (detour on the route where there is one) by Nooteboom is my first necessary stop to enjoy the exquisite travel narrative made in Nooteboom.

This is an intelligent travel book by a splendid Dutch author deeply in love with Spain and also the owner of unusual erudition. Cees Nooteboom embodies the traveler who always allows himself to be tempted by side roads, and although his destination is Santiago de Compostela, he stops in Aragon, passes through Granada, looks for the apse of a church in Soria, and makes a stopover on the island of La Gomera. or in the empty corridors of the Prado museum.

Also his prose deviates and goes into joyful digressions, sometimes literary, sometimes political, ironic, erudite or melancholic. There is in his gaze an astonishment that transfigures reality and turns this work into a meticulous guide to explore the heart of Spain.

The detour to Santiago

533 days

Not a single night, nothing to do with Sabina. Because the most meticulous contemplation is done during the day, with the light giving way to the settings and their composition of scenes. Clarity and clairvoyance come during the day for the writer who intends to narrate what remains.

Over in the Mediterranean the echoes of the sirens still seem to captivate at least writers still interested in those songs to be discovered in the silence. In his beloved home in Menorca, where Cees Nooteboom spends long periods of time each year, he has his feet firmly on fertile land, surrounded by the sea, palm trees and cacti. But his gaze, attentive and curious, extends beyond the horizon.

With skepticism, Nooteboom contemplates a Europe that threatens to disintegrate, gazes at the stars; He also meditates on oblivion, on the identity of David Bowie and Gombrowicz's obsession with immaturity. A compendium of five hundred and thirty-three days of reflections, as diverse as they are interesting, by one of the most lucid, cosmopolitan and recognized writers of our time.

533 days

Foxes come at night

In short distances is where a writer plays it. In the deceptive ring of the story, each author seeks himself to punish his face or liver, running out of breath in the arduous exercise of synthesis and brilliance. In the case of Nooteboom, the exceptionality of the easy task is detected in the fascinating balance between background, simplicity and rhythm.

Set in cities and islands in the Mediterranean, and linked by a thematic nexus, the eight stories in Los Zorros Come At Night can be read as a novel that reflects on memory, life and death. Its protagonists collect and reconstruct fragments of very intense lives that have crystallized in the memory or in the detail of a photograph.

In "Paula", the narrator evokes the brief and mysterious life of a woman he loved; In "Paula II", the same woman is aware that that man continues to think about her. Paula remembers the time they spent together and the man's fear of the darkness of the night, when the foxes come; And yet, the tone of these stories is far from pessimistic: death is not something to be feared...

Nooteboom is a superb stylist, who observes the world with a mixture of melancholy and wonder. His stories are full of humor, pathos and a vast knowledge of things, which make this prestigious European author different.

Foxes come at night

Other recommended books by Cees Nooteboom…

infinite circles

In every current trip, a search for authenticity must prevail. Everything else is tourism without substance. And thank God there are still spaces anywhere in the world where you can rescue aromas of the most fascinating reality. Japan is one of those places where the homogenizing invasion of the Western escapes even among its large cities, thanks to the work and grace of its inhabitants and their commitment to customs.

Infinite Circles collects an illuminating testimony about the country that causes him a unique fascination: Japan. From the futuristic metropolises of Tokyo and Osaka to the ancient imperial cities of Kyoto and Nara, from the prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige, or the fascinating Chojo Jinbutsu Giga scrolls, to the kabuki theater; from the mystical and intellectual rapture of Zen gardens to the intertwined coexistence of Buddhism and Shintoism in temples with ancient rites that still mark the agricultural calendar.

Travels accompanied by the pages of Kawabata, Mishima, Tanizaki, but above all by Shõnagon's Pillow Book and The Story of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, the first novel in history, which portrays the extreme refinement reached by the isolated Heian court in the XNUMXth century.

With his ability to capture the finer details, draw connections, encourage us to see with new eyes, and bring the particular to the universal, Nooteboom plunges into the experience of discovery, beauty, and challenge that Japan continues to be for the West.

Infinite Circles, Cees Nooteboom

Red rain

The trip, light years away from the most simple tourist ideology. Ithaca anywhere when nothing is planned. Visions of a traveler to discover the authenticity of leaving home in search of an adventure that should always go from the inside out.

The first trips, a labyrinth of alleys, the old residents of Menorca or the youthful excesses of the young Nooteboom... images and experiences of the past make up Red Rain, a multifaceted book that reveals the reflections, enthusiasms and concerns of the renowned Dutch author on the island .

An intimate and dazzling collection of texts; mosaic of stories and memories that take place in the house in Menorca where, for fifty years, Cees Nooteboom has spent several months each summer. In it, this tireless traveler finds peace and tranquility in the garden, among trees, stones and animals, all of them endowed with names and personalities.

Nooteboom recovers in this book the essence of his past and brings together some of the fundamental themes that make up his work: friendship, travel, art, landscape and the inexorable passage of time... The result is a compendium of brilliant autobiographical reflections by one of the great representatives of contemporary travel literature.

Red Rain, Cees Nooteboom
4.9/5 - (18 votes)

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