The Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, celebrated for his novels, travel writing and translations, has died aged 92. Publishing house De Bezige Bij announced on Wednesday evening that Nooteboom had 'passed away very peacefully on his beloved island Menorca'. The statement was made on behalf of his wife, photographer Simone Sassen.
Nooteboom first gained recognition in the Netherlands with his 1955 debut novel Philip and the Others, based on long hitchhiking trips through the Mediterranean and Scandinavia. It won the Anne Frank prize and became a Dutch literary classic. He achieved international breakthrough with his 1980 novel Rituals, about two friends with contrasting approaches to life, which was adapted into a film in 1988 and became his first work published in English translation.
Born in The Hague on 31 July 1933, Nooteboom recalled in a 2006 interview with the Guardian that he had no childhood memories until the outbreak of the second world war. When Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, he watched 'the glow of Rotterdam burning' and remembered being 'very afraid'. His father was later killed when a British air raid mistakenly bombed a residential quarter of The Hague.
Nooteboom's fiction and travel writing found even greater acclaim in Germany than in his home country. He also translated works from English into Dutch, including poetry by Ted Hughes and Czesław Miłosz, and plays by Brendan Behan and Seán O'Casey. He received honorary doctorates from universities in Brussels, Nijmegen, Berlin and, in 2019, University College London.
