Customer Reviews

Nomad's Hotel: Travels in Time and Space

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.)

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.

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.

I consider myself to be relatively savvy when it comes to geography. On the other hand, I know I'm reading a great travel book when I'm forced to admit geographical ignorance and must retreat to my atlas. As I read Nomad's Hotel by Cees Nooteboom, I literally had to read the book with the atlas by my side. Yeah, the book is THAT good.

Nomad's Hotel was recently published in 2009, but actually the book is a collection of essays stretching over the past 40-something years of Cees Nooteboom's traveling life. This point is crucial to understanding some the events being described. For example, Nooteboom beautifully describes a visit to Iran, but the visit was in 1975. Nooteboom vividly describes an exotic location which no longer exists given the historical events in that region in the past 30 years. In doing so, Nooteboom's traveling expertise and writing talent have preserved a world we may never be able to explore.

At times a few of the essays were a tad bit long and poetic for my liking. Since the book isn't written chronologically, I simply skipped one oddly poetic chapter in particular and jumped right back into the traveling forays of Cees Nooteboom.

Nothing about the book is terribly adventuresome as Nooteboom never tackles high-endurance pursuits such as a climb to the top of Mt. Everest. Rather, Nomad's Hotel is filled with quiet sophisticated backpacker travel. Nooteboom's writing style is what sets this book apart from many other travel narratives though. On Ireland's Aran Islands, Nooteboom reports "the grass is idiotically green, but as I climb on toward the fort I squelch through brownish mud full of the cloven-hoofed imprints of cattle." All of Nooteboom's essays are descriptive, insightful and entertaining.

Writing about the hotels he stayed in on his various travels, Nooteboom says," And I repeat, the genuine traveler simply wants to sleep". His book has no place for what he calls 'pomp' of writing for whom travel is for luxury and vacation. His travel and writing become yours when you go along the map with him.

The best part of this book is the poetic writing. This is not in the exciting adventure genre. It is more about how the places affected the author than descriptive of the places themselves. It is more like being in the place, as the author, than seeing the various locals written about. Good travel reading. Highly recommended.