Cees Nooteboom
Translator Laura Watkinson
'It is a wonderful voyage of self-discovery, and a psychological exploration of a nation in turmoil' Financial Times.
'a luxurious detour in the lands and history of Germany' Metro.
'Nooteboom wears his erudition lightly, and weaves personal anecdote into memorable reportage' Sunday Telegraph.
'writerly, abstract, walled off in his head ... He reminds us how fast the communist world fell apart, with unimaginable reversals of fortune' Literary Review.
'There is a melancholy in his writing and a nostalgia for the past, both of which are very German - or at least used to be' Spectator.
'His Berlin reportage, from a 1963 Khrushchev rally in East Berlin to the tearing down of the Palast der Republik, brilliantly captures the intensity of the capital and its 'associated layers of memory' The Economist.
Roads to Berlin maps the changing landscape of Germany, from the period before the fall of the Wall to the present. Written and updated over the course of several decades, an eyewitness account of the pivotal events of 1989 gives way to a perceptive appreciation of its difficult passage to reunification.
Nooteboom's writings on politics, people, architecture and culture are as digressive as they are eloquent; his innate curiosity takes him through the landscapes of Heine and Goethe, steeped in Romanticism and mythology, and to Germany's baroque cities. With an outsider's objectivity he has crafted an intimate portrait of the country to its present day.
Cees Nooteboom was born in The Hague in 1933, and now lives in Amsterdam and on the island of Minorca. He is a poet, a novelist and a travel writer whose books include Rituals (1983), The Following Story (1994), Roads to Santiago (1997) and All Souls' Day (2001) and The Foxes Come at Night (2011).
Laura Watkinson translates from Dutch, Italian and German. She lives in Amsterdam and in 2008 founded the Dutch chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
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