Roads To Santiago: Detours and Riddles in the Lands and History of Spain – A Literary Journey Through Spanish Culture with Poetic Passion and Historical Depth

This was a book I ordered as a Christmas gift.

This book was printed in 1992 and the style has not held up well over the years. Meandering and pointless musings, it feels at odds with the very word, pilgrimage. A major obstacle to being absorbed in the writer’s affair with Spain is the incredibly poor quality of black and white photos that are supposed to complement the prose. Many of the photos are so dark that one can only guess the subject matter.

strange and absorbing about a history of which I knew very little. I like his style of writing, the clarity of expression, the whimsical turn of phrase and the depth of description.

A fantastic trAvel log ! Noteboom has deep knowledge about history and art historyI love it!

Excellent

Cees Nooteboom (born 1933) is a Dutch novelist and travel writer. He wrote ROADS TO SANTIAGO in 1992, after having travelled in Spain off and on over the span of forty years. I bought the book thinking that its focus would be the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. And, indeed, the book ends, after 330 pages, in Santiago at the Cathedral and the Plaza de las Paterias, where a priest keeps the great hand-written ledger of the pilgrims who have arrived at the end of one of the three or so most ancient and venerable religious pilgrimages of humanity. But that Santiago is the terminal point of the book owes more, I think, to literary effect and Nooteboom's conceit that Santiago "is the true capital of Spain" than to the religious Camino de Santiago.Instead, the book is, as indicated by the subtitle, a pilgrimage through Spain, with many diversions and musings. The "route" crisscrosses and meanders all across the country, slipping once into Portugal and even taking a brief hop to the Canary Islands. I doubt very much that the book is based on any one trip through Spain; rather it almost certainly is the result of several trips, one or more of which, based on internal evidence, occurred in the mid-1980's. Nooteboom tends much more to the byways and backwaters of Spain than he does to the heavily travelled and touristed areas (indeed, there is no mention of the Mediterranean coastal areas or of Barcelona). And, as a pilgrimage, the book is more historic and humanitarian in nature than religious, although Nooteboom is quite sensitive and attuned to the spiritual dimension of the places he visits.Here is how Nooteboom introduces the reader to his subject: "Spain is brutish, anarchic, egocentric, cruel. Spain is prepared to face disaster on a whim, she is chaotic, dreamy, irrational. Spain conquered the world and then did not know what to do with it, she harks back to her Medieval, Arab, Jewish and Christian past and sits there impassively like a continent that is appended to Europe and yet is not Europe * * *." Nonetheless, Nooteboom clearly loves the land.Nooteboom scatters throughout the book germane historical discussions, so that by book's end one cannot help having learned, or been reminded of, a fair amount of Spanish history. He also includes discussions of some of Spain's greatest painters and writers, including insightful chapters on Velásquez, Zurbarán, and Cervantes (among other things, he visited the cave where Don Quixote was born - i.e., the cave where Cervantes was imprisoned when he supposedly wrote the beginning chapters of the first great novel). He is especially fascinated by, and knowledgeable about, Romanesque architecture, and time and again he goes out of his way to visit some remote, and often locked-up, 800- or 900-year-old Romanesque church.As a bonus, the book contains over sixty black-and-white photographs (most taken by Nooteboom's wife), which are well-coordinated with the text. The book also includes a map of the Iberian peninsula that would have been more useful had it contained more of the places mentioned in the text.ROADS TO SANTIAGO is literary travel writing near its best. It is NOT, however, a travelogue or travel guide, although anyone contemplating an extended stay in Spain or a leisurely journey through the country could profit from it. Nor is it for the impatient. Nooteboom is inclined to philosophical or historical musings, and he is prone to taking off on some rather Borgesian flights of fancy. A few of his fanciful conceits were perplexing or silly (like Borges), and on occasion I found the book verbose. But on the whole ROADS TO SANTIAGO is a very informative and charming pilgrimage through Spain, on both the spatial and temporal dimensions.

I agree with the other 5-star reviews, and would only add that Ina Rilke's translation is masterful. (I will read just about anything she translates from Dutch into English.)

This a good book to read if you have a lot of time in your hands. It is well written, but hard going. I bought this book thinking it will discuss the El Camino de Santiago, but that is not the primary aim of the writer. Do read it if you want a lot of information of other things in Spain.

An excellent read with a fascinating view of Spain

what we wanted

I imagined this might have something to do with the Camino.Not so. The author - it seems a poet and presenter in The Netherlands, has used Compostella as a vehicle on which to hang an account of his lonely meanderings throughout Spain - and Teneriffe- and Portugal. The meanderings are geographical, historical, personal and about art history, architecture and philosophy, also politics and literature, and as such are usually well written and interesting.But: they are accompanied only by a basic map of Spain, showing places, but not his route; and a few poor b/w photos. The meanderings are random and poorly organised; its often hard to establish what century and province he might be in.The Camino crops up occasionally, and he gets out of his hire car and walks a bit of it one day; and resolves one day to do it all. He should.He is obviously good friends with a number of ancient sculptures, but alive human beings are kept well clear of. In fact he has little time for anything less than a few centuries old.He does succeed in conveying something of the mystery and dark side of Spain, no mean achievement, but the underlying facts are swamped by waffle and thus, for this reader, failed to stick in the memory.A great pity - a tough editor could have made this a classic.

Despite all the hype and OTT reviews I was disappointed with this book, but if you like reviews of churches, religious artefacts, and architecture then go ahead and enjoy. Frankly I feel it gives a very limited image of Spain. Having said that he has a good writing style but pity it was not more focussed on the many aspects of Spain.