Cees Nooteboom, a Dutch novelist and travel writer who wrote "Rituals" and "The Following Story," died Feb. 11, 2026. He was 92.
Born in The Hague in 1933, Nooteboom’s early life was shaped by the Second World War, during which his father was killed in a 1945 bombing. He attended several religious schools in Venray and Eindhoven after his mother remarried in 1948, though he did not finish his secondary education. He published his first novel, "Philip and the Others," in 1954, winning the Anne Frank Prize for the debut.
The author balanced his literary pursuits with a career in journalism, writing for the newspaper de Volkskrant and magazines such as Elsevier and Avenue. His extensive travels for these publications provided the foundation for his work as a travel writer and influenced the settings of his fiction across several continents.
Nooteboom achieved wider international success with the 1980 novel "Rituals," which received the Pegasus Prize and became his first book translated into English. He followed this with "The Following Story" in 1991, which won the Aristeion European Prize for Literature. Often cited as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature, he published a wide range of poetry and prose, including the novel "All Souls' Day."