Nooteboom has won numerous literary awards and has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature.

[1] Cornelis Johannes Jacobus Maria "Cees" Nooteboom was born on 31 July 1933 in The Hague, Netherlands.

In 1957 Nooteboom was hired on as a sailor on a freighter to Suriname in order to earn money and ask for the hand of his first wife, Fanny Lichtveld.

Nooteboom is married to Simone Sassen and divides his time between Amsterdam, Germany and the island of Menorca.

Other novels by Nooteboom include Een lied van schijn en wezen (A Song of Truth and Semblance, 1984); Allerzielen (1998) (All Souls' Day, 2001), and Paradijs verloren (Paradise Lost, 2007).

His best-known work to English-speaking audiences is perhaps The Following Story (Het volgende verhaal, 1991), which was written for the Dutch Boekenweek in 1991.