Self-Portrait of an Other

Book excerpt: Cees Nooteboom, best known for his novel The Following Story,is one of the most distinguished and significant authors living in the Netherlands today. Self-Portrait of an Other is one of the most unique and innovative works in his oeuvre. Written in response to and published together with a series of drawings by the Berlin-based artist Max Neumann, the book draws on Nooteboom's personal reflections --his arsenal of memories, dreams, fantasies, landscapes, stories and nightmares-- and presents a set of prose poems that complements and echoes Neumann's work. Full of striking scenes and disturbing images, the poems, driven by the logic of dreams, create the self-portrait of the title. Available now for the first time in English, Self-Portrait of an Other brings together both the images and the text inspired by them, creating an unusual and creative poetic collection.