Nomad's Hotel: Travels in Time and Space. Cees Nooteboom [Paperback]

Cees Nooteboom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2007

One fine day, and I know how romantic and old-fashioned that sounds, but it is what happened in my case, I packed a rucksack, took leave of my mother, and caught the train to Breda. An hour later - you know how small the Netherlands is - I was standing at the side of the road on the Belgian border sticking my thumb in the air, and I have never really stoppped since.' After making his first voyage as a sailor - to earn his passage from his native Holland to South America - Cees Nooteboom has never stopped travelling. Now, his most remarkable travel pieces are gathered together in a fascinating collection: from exotic places like Isfahan and Mali, to seemingly domesticated places like Australia and Zurich, Nooteboom gives us his unique view of the world, using his penetrative observation to show us the strangeness in places we thought we knew and the familiarity of places most of us will probably never see. A whimsical, hilarious, heartbreaking tour of the world from a writer A. S. Byatt has called 'one of the greatest modern novelists', "Nomad's Hotel" is for anyone who dreams about getting away - and then wishes they'd stayed at home.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

One of the Netherlands’ foremost novelists (Lost Paradise, 2007), Nooteboom is also a notable travel writer (Roads to Santiago, 1997). This collection gathers journeys of the past 40 years to Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, West Africa, Iran, and Australia. In them, descriptive travelogue ranks second to considerations of the destinations as repositories of the past. Whether in Venice, Isfahan, or Timbuktu, Nooteboom sees a place through its physical relics and literary associations. The traveler’s innate foreignness, however well informed before arrival in a new place, burgeons with significance for Nooteboom. A traveler arrives, sees, and departs, not likely to return. While the philosophical musings coursing through Nooteboom’s pieces may not be to every travel reader’s taste, they are leavened by the kind of vicarious adventuring that is more to be expected in a travel book. Few ever visit Gambia, after all, but Nooteboom’s been there and elsewhere off the conventional path and will intrigue seekers of a reflective style in the travel genre, in particular. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR NOMAD'S HOTEL

“A book for anyone who has ever felt that eternal traveler’s longing to see more, to know more, to live fully in every place they inhabit.”
-Madeleine Thien, author of Certainty

“A jewel of a travel book, free of pretension, full of easy adventure, fresh with childlike wonder for the world.”
-The Guardian

PRAISE FOR NOMAD'S HOTEL

"These journeys of prizewinning Dutch novelist Nooteboom are as much head trips as passages through space....Nooteboom conveys the excitement of things he doesn't understand, signs and languages he can't decipher, a culture that rebuffs him and the refreshing shock of the wholly unknown...A profound engagement with travel on the astral plane."
-Kirkus Reviews

"[A] lyrical collection...Nooteboom weaves a compelling, perceptive, and yet wondering view of the places he visits...Armchair travelling at its best but also of interest to anyone who enjoys outstanding writing."
-Library Journal

"[Nooteboom] has spent a career traveling for the purpose of producing books and essays, and the results are stunning, as is shown in this collection."
-RL Magazine

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Vintage Books USA (February 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099453789
• ISBN-13: 978-0099453789
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,437,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No one compares, November 27, 2009

By 

sdk (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Nomad's Hotel: Travels in Time and Space (Paperback)

Nooteboom travel writes like no other: fearless, an acute observer and highly gifted. A serious but unpretentious intellectual, Nooteboom's writing inspires travel for discovery and self-discovery. Truly deep. I read this book and his others slowly to absorb his perspectives on life and human behavior. (Not as demanding as Roads to Santiago.)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nooteboom's Hotel, 1 Paradise Parade, Shangri-La, Ultima Thule, next door to the Restaurant Chez God, October 18, 2009

By 

R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nomad's Hotel: Travels in Time and Space (Paperback)

That is the ideal hotel of Cees Nooteboom (b. 1933), an accomplished Dutch novelist and world traveler. In addition to his nine or so novels, Nooteboom has authored even more books of travel writing. NOMAD'S HOTEL is a collection of English translations of various of his travel pieces written between 1971 and 2002.

The locales that are the subjects of these essays range from Gambia, Mali, and Morocco in Africa, to Iran (circa 1975 and still under the Shah), to the island of Aran, and include the cities of Venice, Munich, Mantua, and Zurich. In addition, there are several miscellaneous travel-related pieces, including two entitled "Nooteboom's Hotel", mosaics composed of the most distinctive features and experiences from the hundreds of hotels in which he has stayed. Through the course of the book, Nooteboom muses about the very exercise of travel. Harking back to a 12th-Century Arabian philosopher, he gives credit for at least part of the attraction of travel to the notion of "siyaha" or "pilgrimage": "Traveling around the world, meditating and drawing nearer to God. The latter would be a pretension for me, but substitute the word 'God' with 'mystery' and I do feel able to subscribe to it."

Three things elevate NOMAD'S HOTEL above the run-of-the-mill collection of travel pieces. First, there is Nooteboom's extraordinary eye or percipience, which he complements with a novelist's imagination. Second, Nooteboom's essays are unusually rich in their historical dimension. He treats his foreign locales as so many different doors to the past, so that the book, a la its subtitle, truly is part time travel. Third, the book is superbly written. On all three points, one might be excused for thinking that perhaps Jorge Luis Borges was at least a collaborator.

NOMAD'S HOTEL is not a book to be read at one or two sittings. The pieces are so rich, so complex and imaginative, that they should be savored individually -- much like, come to think of it, the stories of Borges.

1.0 out of 5 stars very disjointed style of writing, November 11, 2011

By 

Brian Maitland (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nomad's Hotel: Travels in Time and Space (Paperback)

I found Nooteboom's writing just too wordy and flowery to get through. I gave up pretty much at the start. Just could not wrap my head round his style of writing.
Very disappointing given the topic.