In Memoriam: Cees Nooteboom
12 February 2026
The Dutch Foundation for Literature mourns the death of Cees Nooteboom (1933-2026). With his passing, the Netherlands has lost one of its most important and internationally acclaimed writers.
Nooteboom's oeuvre, which consists of novels, stories, travelogues, poems and essays, has been translated into more than thirty languages—from Argentina to South Korea—and has won numerous awards at home and abroad.
He enjoyed great success with Rituelen (Rituals, 1980), his first book to be translated into English, for which he received the American Pegasus Prize. With Het volgende verhaal (The Following Story), he achieved a major international breakthrough in the early 1990s. In 2002, he received the prestigious German Goethe Prize, in 2024 the P.C. Hooft Prize, and in 2009 the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren for his entire oeuvre.
He traveled abroad many times with the Dutch Foundation for Literature (such as to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1993, where he helped the Netherlands and Flanders give a successful guest country presentation), always proving himself to be an erudite and diplomatic representative—also of the work of fellow authors. He had a lifelong fascination with European history and culture. He also had long friendships with foreign authors such as Rüdiger Safranski, Alberto Manguel and Mary McCarthy.
He lived in Berlin, Amsterdam and on the Spanish island of Menorca, where he had a garden full of palm trees and spent his final years in relative seclusion, corresponding with friends and writing fiction. Cees Nooteboom passed away on February 11, 2026, at the age of 92. The Dutch Foundation for Literature wishes his family and friends strength in this time of loss.