The Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, whose novels, travel writing and translations made him a prominent literary figure in postwar Europe, has died aged 92.

Publishing house De Bezige Bij said in a statement on Wednesday evening that Nooteboom had “passed away very peacefully on his beloved island Menorca”. The statement was made on behalf of the author’s wife, the photographer Simone Sassen.

“We will miss the friendship, erudition, enthusiasm and individuality of this internationally acclaimed writer,” it said.

Nooteboom first made a name for himself in the Netherlands with his 1955 debut novel Philip and the Others. Based on long hitchhiking trips to the Mediterranean and through Scandinavia, it won the Anne Frank prize and became a Dutch literary classic.

He achieved his international breakthrough with his 1980 novel Rituals, about two friends – one of whom breaks rules frequently while the other follows them strictly. The book was turned into a film in 1988 and became his first work to be published in English translation.

Born in The Hague on 31 July 1933, Nooteboom told the Guardian in a 2006 interview that he had no childhood memories until the outbreak of the second world war.

When Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, “we watched on the horizon the glow of Rotterdam burning and I remember being very afraid and having to have cold water thrown in my face to calm me down”.

His father was later killed when a British air raid levelled a residential quarter of The Hague “by mistake”.

Germany was later one of the European countries were Nooteboom’s fiction and travel writing found even greater critical acclaim and commercial success than at home.

As well as writing his own work, Nooteboom translated works from English into Dutch, such as poetry by Ted Hughes and Czesław Miłosz, and the plays of Brendan Behan and Seán O’Casey.

He was awarded honorary doctorates from universities in Brussels, Nijmegen, Berlin and, in 2019, the University College London.