Since making his first voyage as a sailor-to earn his passage from his native Holland to South America -- Cees Nooteboom has been captivated by foreign countries and cultures and has never stopped travelling. This collection of his most enjoyable travel pieces ranges far and wide, informed throughout by the author's humanity and gentle humour. From exotic locales such as Isfahan, the Gambia and Mali to more familiar places such as Australia and Zurich, Nooteboom reveals the world as he lives it, showing us the strangeness in places we thought we knew and the familiarity of places most of us will never visit. His phenomenal gifts as an observer and travel the wealth of his reading and learning make him a delightful companion. Nomad's Hotel features an introduction from fellow world-class traveller and writer extraordinaire Alberto Manguel.

Cees Nooteboom is widely acclaimed as Holland's greatest living writer. He is a poet and the award-winning author of some fifty books, including Rituals, Roads to Santiago and The Following Story. A.S. Byatt has called him "one of the great modern novelists."

Cees Nooteboom's profile page

Internationally acclaimed as an anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, and editor, Alberto Manguel is the bestselling author of several award-winning books, including A Dictionary of Imaginary Places, with Gianni Guadalupi, and A History of Reading. Manguel grew up in Israel, where his father was the Argentinian ambassador.

In the mid-1980s, Manguel moved to Toronto where he lived for twenty years. Manguel's novel, News from a Foreign Country Came, won the McKitterick Prize in 1992. During the 1990s, he wrote regularly for the Globe & Mail (Toronto), the Times Literary Supplement (London), the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Svenska Dagbladet (Stockholm). In 2000, Manguel moved to the Poitou-Charentes region of France, where he and his partner purchased and renovated a medieval farmhouse. Among the renovations is an oak-panelled library housing Manguel's collection of 30,000 books.

Célébrité internationale à plus d’un titre — il est anthologiste, traducteur, essayiste, romancier et éditeur — Alberto Manguel est l’auteur du Dictionnaire des lieux imaginaires, en collaboration avec Gianni Guadalupi, et d’une Histoire de la lecture, entre autres succès de librairie. Manguel a grandi en Israël où son père était ambassadeur de l’Argentine.

Au milieu des années 1980, Manguel s’installe à Toronto où il vivra pendant vingt ans. Il reçoit le McKitterick Prize en 1992 pour son roman News from a Foreign Country Came (Dernières nouvelles d'une terre abandonnée). Pendant les années 1990, il a été collaborateur régulier au Globe & Mail (Toronto), au Times Literary Supplement (Londres), au Sydney Morning Herald, au Australian Review of Books, au New York Times et au Svenska Dagbladet (Stockholm). Depuis 2000, Manguel habite la région française de Poitou-Charentes, dans une maison de ferme du Moyen-Âge qu’il a achetée et remise à neuf avec son compagnon. Parmi les rénovations, une bibliothèque lambrissée de chêne qui abrite les 30 000 livres de la collection de Manguel.

Alberto Manguel's profile page

Ann Kelland is an experienced translator and has translated such titles as Geert Mak's An Island in Time and Cees Nooteboom's Nomad's Hotel:Travels in Time and Space.

Ann Kelland's profile page

"Nooteboom writes with an intensity of observation, a disregard for convention, and a keen concern with the great philosophical questions of space, time and existence...Nomad's Hotel is as a travel book should be: An opening into other worlds, both real and imaginary."

Women's Post

"Nomad's Hotel is the fruit of [Nooteboom's] wanderings. The collection of essays ranges from travels to the familiar -- Venice or Australia -- to the more exotic, such as Gambia or Mail...In fact, although he is an indefatigable traveler and can offer detailed descriptions of the places he visits, the author is perhaps more entranced by the inner drives that motivate his travels."

Montreal Gazette

"Nooteboom is a talented writer and a conscientious, intelligent traveler, 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...Manguel points out that Nooteboom is not in fact a nomad, as he calls himself: his is omnipresent, and it is this experience of having been in a place rather than traveling through it that adds perceptiveness and sensitivity to the writing."

Geist Magazine

"[Nooteboom] is not without skill at reporting and analyzing events, as in a nearly piece about Iran in the days of the last Shah. His hallmark, however, is not writing about actually traveling, but rather about existing in a place, making stories from hundreds of small details instead of officially licensed facts...He doesn't do reporting, he doesn't guide, offer tips or merely give his impressions. He makes an art of it."

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