Roads to Berlin
Nooteboom, a renowned Dutch novelist, travel writer, and poet, was a visiting scholar in Berlin, and he watched and wrote as the wall came down in 1989. Nooteboom has a historian’s scruples, a fantasist’s Baroque imagination, a novelist’s narrative skill, and a prophet’s sensitivity to the future. Most of the book’s first section was written in that watershed year, while later pieces were written on occasions when he returned and include speeches, articles for German editorial pages, and “intermezzos,” or extended reflections on his previous visits and new circumstances. He revises and refines his sense of Germany, the once divided and now united nation at the center of Europe. This is a valedictory on a country that shaped Nooteboom’s life (born in 1933, he was six when German bombs fell on his native country) and work, including the Berlin-set novel, All Souls Day (2001). Every other page poses a vital question or offers a startling insight, and you can’t believe there are dozens more. This astonishing book conveys a sense of life lived at a crucial time in history. --Michael Autrey