In "Philip and the Others," Cees Nooteboom tells the story of a young man who is on the trail of a dreamlike Chinese girl, hitchhiking across Europe and rushing from acquaintance to acquaintance. In youth hostels and on the streets, he attends his "school of life." In seven chapters, the "fabulist magician" (FAZ) unfolds a melancholic fairy tale in which eroticism plays a significant role. Here, we experience, as the writer Hermann Lenz puts it, "gropingly and in awe, the feeling of youth that moves toward an indeterminate goal and meets the world with tenderness." "Philip and the Others," Nooteboom's debut, written nearly fifty years ago and passed down as a cult book from generation to generation, is a very special novel: "It is astonishing," wrote the critic Rolf Brockschmidt, "with what eloquence Nooteboom wields language.".