‘Cees Nooteboom, I do not know who he is, but I do know what he is like. And I know what he can do with words if he remains true to himself: a novelist pur sang.’ – C.J.E. Dinaux, Haarlems Dagblad, 1956

‘The reader will look forward with excitement to new work by this undeniably highly gifted writer, as will I.’ – de Volkskrant, 1956

‘Every image is truly surprising […]. Cees Nooteboom’s magnificent effort and style are reminiscent of the Old Masters of the Dutch still life.’ – Neue Zürcher Zeitung on Rituelen (Rituals)

‘Nooteboom’s André Steenkamp is a displaced person in more than one respect; he is behind the times. And it is precisely this process of getting behind the times, becoming meaningless, that Nooteboom depicts so evocatively as a slow death.’ – Hella S. Haasse

‘The provocative tone with which this novel responds to the apocalyptic vision is of unprecedented originality in this country.’ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Rituelen (Rituals)

‘In this age of literary specialization, the Dutch author Cees Nooteboom still wears the many-colored coat of the man of letters – poet, novelist, playwright, translator and travel writer.’ – Michael Malone, The New York Times Book Review

‘Very personal and topical travel stories of a quality that is unfortunately rarely encountered in Dutch periodicals and newspapers.’ – Max van Rooy, NRC Handelsblad

‘He is a philosopher, a bon viveur, a rogue, a dreamer, a cosmopolitan and a nomad, a cook, a melancholic. He has something of Pascal about him, and Eulenspiegel, Wolfram Sieback and Robert Burton. And he is a metaphysician: Cees Nooteboom.’ – Joachim Sartorius

‘Much more than a 20th-century village storyteller, Cees Nooteboom stands as an impressive and inimitable voice among contemporary writers.’ – Linda Simon, The New York Times Book Review

‘The literary travel story is a genre that Cees Nooteboom has raised to a high level. Like Canetti, he is able to blend factual and personal details in such a way as to create a completely distinctive and rich kind of prose.’ – Gerrit Jan Zwier

‘Perhaps the most important book I’ve read this year. I’m deeply impressed by this Cees Nooteboom. To think the Dutch have such a great writer!’ – Marcel Reich-Ranicki about Het volgende verhaal (The Following Story)

‘What he seeks is an understanding of the irreconcilable. He is a writer who measures himself against the culture he encounters.’ – Doeschka Meijsing on the travel stories

‘An impressive philosophical novel… elegant and subtle.’ – Lire on Het volgende verhaal (The Following Story)

‘All of his work possesses an erudition, a command of language, and skill that we find in America in Nabokov and Guy Davenport. Consider it a niche, if you will, but one we must keep.’ – Robert Buckeye, Review of Contemporary Fiction

‘I firmly believe that Rituelen is his best novel, and in a sense the centre of his entire oeuvre.’ – Arnold Heumakers, de Volkskrant

‘These days there is hardly any more wonderful, more spiritual pleasure than reading Cees Nooteboom.’ – Neue Zürcher Zeitung

‘Nooteboom is a novelist of big themes, but he is never heavy-handed. He embeds philosophical musings in observations of the commonplace, so that his ideas sneak up on you, appearing unexpectedly, breathtakingly, like angels hidden in abandoned cupboards.’ – Jennifer Vanderbes, The Washington Post

‘Cees Nooteboom is a great European novelist. He is great both because he understands the shapes of the history we have lived, and because he makes new fictive forms in which to record them.’ – A.S. Byatt in her introduction to Rituals