The consummate portrait of Spain for all readers, “Roads to Santiago” is an evocative travelogue through the architecture, art, and landscapes of Spain past and present. A richly detailed chronicle of one writer’s thirty-five-year love affair with his adopted second country, this meditation on Spain offers a world not visible to the casual tourist. Nooteboom creates a reverie of the country that so possesses him by invoking the great spirits of Spain’s past—El Cid, Cervantes, the ill-fated Habsburgs, Velázquez, and Zurbarán. Be it a discussion of his trip to the magnificent Prado Museum or his visit to the shrine of the Black Madonna of Guadalupe, Nooteboom writes with the depth and intelligence of a historian, the bravado of an adventurer, and the passion of a poet.