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Cees Nooteboom (born 31 July 1933) is a Dutch novelist, poet, and journalist. He has won numerous literary awards and has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature.

Life

Cornelis Johannes Jacobus Maria "Cees" Nooteboom is born on 31 July 1933 in The Hague, Netherlands.

Nooteboom was born in The Hague, where his father was killed by a British air raid in 1945. After his mother remarried in 1948, his Catholic stepfather enrolled Nooteboom in several religious secondary schools, including a Franciscan school in Venray and a school run by the Augustinians in Eindhoven. He finished his secondary education at a night school in Utrecht.

After his first job with a bank in Hilversum, Nooteboom traveled throughout Europe. In addition to his writing, he has worked for the weekly magazine Elsevier from 1957 to 1960 and at the newspaper de Volkskrant from 1961 to 1968. In 1967, he became the travel editor of the magazine Avenue.

Nooteboom hired on as a sailor on a freighter to Surinam in 1957 in order to ask for the hand of his first wife, Fanny Lichtveld. They divorced in 1964. Some of his experiences are recounted in the book De verliefde gevangene (1958). He was also in a relationship with the singer, Liesbeth List. Currently he is married to Simone Sassen and divides his time between Amsterdam and the island of Minorca.

In addition to his many literature awards, Nooteboom was awarded honorary doctorates from Radboud University in Nijmege..
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