Night Train to Lisbon

A major hit in Germany that spent 140 weeks on the best-seller list and went on to become one of Europe's biggest literary blockbusters in the last five years, Night Train to Lisbon now introduces to the English-language world the critically acclaimed Swiss author Pascal Mercier. It is an astonishing novel, a large-scale international literary feat in the vein of Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Daniel Kehlmann, and a compelling exploration of consciousness, the possibility of truly understanding another person, and the ability of language to define our very selves. Raimund Gregorius is a Latin teacher at a Swiss college with a vast knowledge of Greek and Hebrew who one day--after a chance encounter with a mysterious Portuguese woman--abandons his old life to start a new one. He takes the night train to Lisbon and carries with him a book by Amadeu de Prado, a (fictional) Portuguese doctor and essayist whose writings explore the ideas of loneliness, mortality, death, friendship, love, and loyalty. Chafing against his solitary routine for the first time in his life, Gregorius becomes obsessed by what he reads and restlessly struggles to comprehend the life of the author. His investigations lead him all over the city of Lisbon, as he speaks to those who were entangled in Prado's life. Gradually, the picture of an extraordinary man emerges--a doctor and poet who rebelled against Salazar's dictatorship. Recalling Bernhard Schlink and Nicole Krauss in its affirmation of the power of literature, will, and the individual, Night Train to Lisbon is a book of sensual beauty and artistic excellence, one that will be remembered for its soul and wit as well as its universality and great intellectual depth.