Alfred Kossmann died in 1998, and is already quite forgotten and obscure. The Dutch literary scene does not have publishers' series such as Penguin Classics or Modern Classics or Vintage, which might keep classics and recent literature available for a large audience. Most of Kossmann's work, during his lifetime, was published in the Reuzensalamander series (Querido's), not included in the Salamander series, which perpetuates the printing of modern literature. This means that most of his work is only available in second-hand editions.

De smaak van groene kaas is a collection of travel essays. In his later life, Kossmann became particularly fond of Greece and lived there for a few years after a car accident he suffered in 1972. In De smaak van groene kaas seven essays are collected which describe, mainly, his travels in the Mediterranean. However, the first essay is devoted to the author's hometown, Rotterdam.

Rotterdam was severely damaged during the Second World War, as it was bombed by the Nazis. It is now hard to imagine Rotterdam as a city of the same splendour as Amsterdam. In this essay about Rotterdam, Kossmann's explores how other authors from Rotterdam felt and wrote about the city.

The travel essays are very introvert prose pieces. Travel merely seems a pretext for introspection. The essays, therefore, do not really describe the landscape or foreign places, but record what the author thought or felt. His ruminations often ponder on his own life facts, or literature and his development as an author.

The seven essays in this collection seem to describe one journey, which starts in Rotterdam, then, via Amsterdam, along the Rhine, through Germany and Austria to southern France. Next stops are in Greece, Morocco, Ceuta, Spain and return to the Netherlands.

What is interesting is that even momentary impressions, such as the lights of a fleet of fishing vessels off the coast of Marseille, appear in later works, for example in the title of the short novel De wind en de lichten der schepen. Thus, De smaak van groene kaas is not just a travelogue, but more a form of autobiography, that shows how Kossmann creates connections between his past and future literary works. ( )