Nomad’s Hotel: Travels in Time and Space

Cees Nooteboom begins his collection of essays, Nomad’s Hotel: Travels in Time and Space (Douglas & McIntyre), by quoting the twelfth-century philosopher Ibn al-Arabi: “The origin of existence is movement.” The next piece, “Forever Venice,” is filled with stagnant sentences that tend to neglect the loose plot; many of the following pieces unfold in the same way. What arises is less a book of travel stories than a collection of Nooteboom’s musings on travel and impressions of places—the Gambia, Mali, the Aran Islands, Zurich and others. But Nooteboom is a talented writer and a conscientious, intelligent traveller, so his meditations are insightful and engaging, and they show his knowledge of history and his interest in places and their people. In the introduction to Nomad’s Hotel, Alberto Manguel points out that Nooteboom is not in fact a nomad, as he calls himself: he is omnipresent, and it is this experience of having been in a place rather than travelling through it that adds perceptiveness and sensitivity to the writing.