Though a tireless explorer of distant cultures, Cees Nooteboom has also been returning to the island of Menorca, "the island of the wind," for more than forty years, and it is in his house there, with a study full of books and a garden taken over with native plants and fauna, that the 533 days of writing take place.
533 Days is a meditative rhapsody that is nonetheless haunted by the threat of a disintegrating Europe and other worries of being a global citizen. With thoughts ranging from his suffering hibiscus plant to the death of David Bowie, Nooteboom meditates on how despite the avoidance of current events, he finds himself forced to reckon with today's world because, as Candide says, one must cultivate one's own garden, and one's own garden is in the world, whether one likes it or not.
