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Books

Is it boring being the god of the sea?

Ces Nooteboom asks lots of presumptious questions like this in his Letters to Poseidon, translated by Laura Watkinson – but he’s more than a match for the trident-bearing earth-shaker

18 October 2014

9:00 AM

18 October 2014

9:00 AM

Letters to Poseidon by Cees Nooteboom (translated by Laura Watkinson)

MacLehose Press, pp.250, £14.99, ISBN: 9780857052759

Writing to a god seems a presumptuous thing. Who are we, feeble mortal creatures whose lives pass in the blink of an eye, to address the great immortal deities?

The Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, now entering his ninth decade and never knowingly lacking in chutzpah, is not one to be deterred by such considerations.

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