Cees Nooteboom

Cees Nooteboom (born July 31, 1933, The Hague, Netherlands—died February 11, 2026, Minorca, Spain) was a Dutch writer known for his novels and travel writing. Nooteboom’s work explores memory, belonging, and identity in transcultural contexts, especially in postwar Europe. The transnational themes he engaged with contributed to his popularity across Europe.

Early life and first novel

Nooteboom was born to Hubertus and Johanna Nooteboom in The Hague in 1933 and was educated at an Augustinian monastery school in Eindhoven, Netherlands. He remarked that he remembered little of his childhood until the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. World War II had a profound impact on him, as he lost his father to wounds sustained in an accidental bombing by Allied forces toward the end of the war.

Nooteboom developed a passion for travel early in his life, and his experiences hiking across western Europe shaped his literary imagination. These experiences contributed to his first novel, Philip en de anderen (Philip and the Others), which was published in 1955 and won him the Anne Frank Prize, a literary award presented between 1957 and 1966 in the Netherlands.

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A Study of Poetry

Literary work

Working as a travel columnist for the Dutch periodicals Avenue and Elsevier, Nooteboom published a number of collections of travel essays, including Een nacht in Tunesië (1965; “A Night in Tunisia”), Een avond in Isfahan: reisverhalen uit Perzië, Gambia, Duitsland, Japan, Engeland, Madeira, en Maleisië (1978; “An Evening in Isfahan: Travel Writings from Persia, Gambia, Germany, Japan, England, Madeira, and Malaysia”), De zucht naar het Westen (1985; “The Yearning for the West”), and Berlijnse notities (1990; “Berlin Notes”). Having for many years lived part of each year in Spain, he produced an hour-long film on the pilgrimage to the Spanish commune of Santiago de Compostela and published Omweg naar Santiago (1997; The Roads to Santiago). His other nonfiction includes Nooit gebouwd Nederland (1983; Unbuilt Netherlands), an account of several visionary design projects conceived by Dutch architects.

Nooteboom’s style evolved from melancholy and lyrical to grounded and meditative over the course of his career. His novel Rituelen (1980; Rituals) is a study of chaos, order, and obsession. It won the F. Bordewijk Prize, annually conferred by the Jan Campert Foundation to exceptional Dutch prose, and the Pegasus Prize and brought him international recognition. Myth and reality are contrasted in Een lied van schijn en wezen (1981; A Song of Truth and Semblance) and in the fable-novel In Nederland (1984; In the Dutch Mountains); in both of these works, the lives of the narrators—who are authors—become interwoven with the lives of their characters. In Volgende verhaal (1993; The Following Story) a man falls asleep in Amsterdam but wakes up in Portugal; he must then examine his memories and regrets to understand why and how he arrived in this other place. In his 21st-century fiction, including Paradijs verloren (2004; Lost Paradise) and Nachts komen de vossen (2009; The Foxes Come at Night), Nooteboom explored themes of loss and the struggle to find meaning in the modern world through solitary protagonists moving across landscapes marked by personal trauma or historical upheaval.

Nooteboom’s poetry, in such collections as Het zwarte gedicht (1960; “The Black Poem”), Aas: gedichten (1982; “Carrion: Poetry”), Rollende stenen (1991; “Rolling Stones”), and Licht overal (2008, expanded and republished in 2012; Light Everywhere), is largely concerned with mortality and the passage of time.

Death

Cees Nooteboom died on February 11, 2026, at the age of 92 on the Spanish island of Minorca, where he and his wife, photographer Simone Sassen, spent part of each year. Nooteboom’s publisher De Bezige Bij made the announcement on behalf of Sassen that evening.

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