Venice

Cees Nooteboom was born in The Hague in 1933, and now lives in Amsterdam and on the island of Minorca. He is a poet and novelist who has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards such as the Pegasus Prize and the Aristeion Prize for his novels, which include Rituals (1983), The Following Story (1994), and All Souls' Day (2001). His books of travel writing, Roads to Santiago (1997) and Roads to Berlin (2012) have become backlist classics.

“Mr. Nooteboom, fortunately, does have a highly distinctive voice—and often a new angle of vision (as does his wife, Simone Sassen, who took the striking photographs for this book). . . . He is forever excited by the abundance of wonders that the city continues to reveal. . . . The whole book is the illuminating testimony of a man who cannot look away and so sees things that others, even those with more specialist knowledge, have missed.”—Gregory Dowling, Wall Street Journal

“[Nooteboom] prowls the streets, conjuring up emblems of the past in statues, paintings, and gardens, seeking answers to questions that are more like riddles: Are we still who we once were? and Were we ever who we once were? . . . His deep knowledge and love of Venice’s past provide the suitably pleasurable Venetian contradiction.”—J. R. Patterson, World Literature Today

“For Nooteboom, Venice is above all a city of spirits, memories and stories, and his beguiling book—well served by Laura Watkinson's free-flowing translation—is a leisurely examination of an entrancement that has deepened with each visit, over the course of half a century.”—Jonathan Buckley, Times Literary Supplement

“With his customary intelligence, erudition and sheer passion for the world we live in, Cees Nooteboom has achieved the impossible: to say something new about the ageless city about which everything has been said.”—Alberto Manguel