Bettie's Books

R4 Sat Mars 12:30am. A collection of stories dealing with death and bereavement1. set in Venice - brilliant writing...BBC blurb: Now in his eightieth year, Cees Nooteboom is one of Holland's leading and most respected authors, a writer of both novels and travel books and a consummate short story writer. The Foxes Come at Night, his recent collection, has won the 2010 Gouden Uil - the most prestigious literary award in Flanders and is now published in English. The collection is set in the cities and islands of the Mediterranean, territory Nooteboom knows well. The stories are linked by their meditations on memory and age, on love won and lost and on the fragments of life treasured in a photograph or a detail. In 'Gondolas' a fine art dealer finds the past stirred by a photograph taken on the same Venetian canal bank forty years ago. In 'Thunderstorm' a couple's own fissures are reflected in a horrific moment on a beach. And in 'Late September' a woman waits on a windblown Spanish cafe terrace before the inevitable conclusion to her lonely day. Written with haunting attention to detail and pitch perfect prose, sensitively translated by Ina Rilke, these stories show one of the European masters of the genre at his best.Reader Ian McDiarmid. Abridger Sally Marmion. Producer Di Speirs.Going to leave this where it stands.