Family

Cees (Cornelis Johannes Jacobus Maria) Nooteboom was born on 31 July 1933 as the second child of Hubertus Nooteboom and Johanna Pessers (this surname would later feature frequently in his fiction), with an elder sister, Hanneke, born in 1932, and a younger brother, Huub, born in 1940. Nooteboom has spoken out about his early years, ‘Other people can trot out their entire childhood, complete with dates, schools and events, as though they were their own computer, but I can’t do that. Sometimes I wonder whether I was ever really there.’ Yet vivid memories often feature in his work: the march of the invading Germans and the bombing of the airfield at Ypenburg, which he watched with his father from the balcony of the family home. His father left the family during the war and remarried in 1944. A son from this second marriage, Hugo, was born that year. Nooteboom’s father died in spring 1945 of the injuries that he suffered during the bombing of the Bezuidenhout area of The Hague. After the war, Nooteboom’s mother took the family to live in Tilburg, where she originally came from.