Nomad's Hotel: Travels in Time and Space

by Cees Nooteboom (Author), Ann Kelland (Translator)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.28

  '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 stopped 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.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.72

  This absurdly enjoyable collection of travel pieces by one of the world's most entertaining writers takes us from the exotic by way of Gambia, Mali and Isfahan, to the seemingly domesticated vistas of Australia and Zurich, and finds poetry and beauty in them all. What marks this collection out as something different from an ordinary travel anthology are Nooteboom's meditations on what it means to travel and to be a traveller and his quest, like that of so many other explorers, to discover the perfect hotel. This is vintage Nooteboom; a book of immense range and depth, it is an illuminating record of a world class traveller's many discoveries and insights and perfect holiday, and armchair, reading.