Dutch author Cees Nooteboom, "whose novels, travel writing, and translations made him a prominent literary figure in postwar Europe," died February 11, the Guardian reported. He was 92.
In a statement made on behalf of the author's wife, photographer Simone Sassen, publishing house De Bezige Bij said Nooteboom had "passed away very peacefully on his beloved island Menorca.... We will miss the friendship, erudition, enthusiasm and individuality of this internationally acclaimed writer."
Nooteboom initially gained attention in the Netherlands with his debut novel, Philip and the Others (1955), based on long hitchhiking trips to the Mediterranean and through Scandinavia. It won the Anne Frank prize and became a Dutch literary classic. "He achieved his international breakthrough with his 1980 novel Rituals, about two friends--one of whom breaks rules frequently while the other follows them strictly," the Guardian noted. It was adapted into a 1988 film and became his first work to be published in English.
Born in the Hague, Nooteboom told the Guardian in a 2006 interview he had no childhood memories until early in World War II. When Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, "we watched on the horizon the glow of Rotterdam burning and I remember being very afraid and having to have cold water thrown in my face to calm me down."
His other fiction translated into English includes In the Dutch Mountains (1987), The Following Story (1994), All Souls' Day (2001), Lost Paradise (2007), and The Foxes Come at Night (2011). In addition to his own books, Nooteboom translated works from English into Dutch, including poetry by Ted Hughes and Czesław Miłosz, as well as the plays of Brendan Behan and Seán O'Casey.
Noting that his books were translated into more than 25 languages and his work is particularly highly valued by readers and critics in Germany, the Associated Press reported that while he never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, "he was decorated with many other honors, including all the major Dutch language prizes and the literature prize awarded by Germany's Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in 2010."