Raimund Gregorius teaches classical languages at a Swiss lycée, and lives a life governed by routine. One day, a chance encounter with a Portuguese woman inspires him to question his life—and leads him to an extraordinary book that will open the possibility of changing it. Inspired by the words of Amadeu de Prado, a doctor whose intelligence and magnetism left a mark on everyone who met him and whose principles led him into a confrontation with Salazar’s dictatorship, Gergorius boards a train to Lisbon. As Gregorius becomes fascinated with unlocking the mystery of who Prado was, an extraordinary tale unfolds.
Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In Swiss novelist Mercier's U.S. debut, Raimund Gregorius is a gifted but dull 57-year-old high school classical languages teacher in Switzerland. After a chance meeting with a Portuguese woman in the rain, he discovers the work of a Portuguese poet and doctor, Amadeu de Prado, persecuted under Salazar's regime. Transfixed by the work, Gregorius boards a train for Lisbon, bent on discovering Prado's fate and on uncovering more of his work. He returns to the sites of Prado's life and interviews the major players—Prado's sisters, lovers, fellow resistors and estranged best friend—and begins to lose himself. The artful unspooling of Prado's fraught life is richly detailed: full of surprises and paradoxes, it incorporates a vivid rendering of the Portuguese resistance to Salazar. The novel, Mercier's third in Europe, was a blockbuster there. Long philosophical interludes in Prado's voice may not play as well in the U.S., but the book comes through on the enigmas of trying to live and write under fascism. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
“One of the most thoughtful and entertaining novels to come out of Europe in a decade . . . a smart, heartfelt, thoroughly enjoyable book written for thinking adults, and the most recent incarnation, from Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf right down to Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind, of that potent, ever-popular myth—the book that changes your life. . . . Go ahead and buy this one—believe me, you'll want to read it more than once.”—Nick Dimartino, Shelf Awareness
“One reads this book almost breathlessly, can’t put it down . . . A handbook for the soul, intellect and heart.”—Die Welt (Germany)
“A treat for the mind. One of the best books I have read in a long time.” –Isabel Allende
“This beautiful book…lit like a fuse that snaked its way into my consciousness, sending out sparklers of light that made me feel more alive, more awake, for days. I hated to see it come to an end. What more can one ask?” –Maya Muir, The Oregonian
“A book so intent on answering the larger questions of existence that if readers give it a chance, it could be life-altering. A brilliant book that manages to excite the mind and the heart in equal measure.” —Betsy Burton, The King’s English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, UT
“Challenges the reader, both intellectually and philosophically. . . . I was hooked—I read the book in no more than two sittings.” —Bruce Tierney, BookPage
“Might call to mind the magical realism of Jorge Amado or Gabriel Garcia Marquez . . . allusive and thought-provoking, intellectually curious and yet heartbreakingly jaded. . . . Its lyricism and aura of the mysterious only enhance the tale’s clear-sighted confrontation with the enduring questions.” —Tony Lewis, The Providence Journal
“Rich, dense, star-spangled . . . The novels of Robert Stone come to mind, and Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-Fe, and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, and Kobo Abe’s The Ruined Map, not to mention Marcus Aurelius and Wittgenstein. . . [but] what Night Train to Lisbon really suggests is Roads to Freedom, Jean-Paul Sartre’s breathless trilogy about identity-making.” —John Leonard, Harper’s Magazine
“Celebrates the beauty and allure of language . . . adroitly addresses concepts of sacrifice, secrets, memory, loneliness, infatuation, tyranny, and translation. It highlights how little we know about others.” —Tony Miksanek, Chicago Sun-Times
“The text of Amadeu’s writing is filled not with mere nuggets of wisdom but with a mother lode of insight, introspection, and an honest, self-conscious person’s illuminations of all the dark corners of his own soul. . . . Mercier has captured a time in history—one of time times—when men must take a stand.” —Valerie Ryan, The Seattle Times
“Dreamlike . . . A meditative, deliberate exploration of loneliness, language and the human condition . . . The reader is transported and, like Gregorius, better for having taken the journey.” —Debra Ginsberg, The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Readers will be rewarded . . . by the involving, unpredictable, and well-constructed plot and Mercier’s virtuosic orchestration of a large and memorable cast of characters. As the stories of Gregorius and de Prado draw together, this becomes a moving meditation on the defining moments in our lives, the ‘silent explosions that change everything.” —Forest Turner, Library Journal
“The age-old intellectual’s dilemma, considered in a compelling blend of suspenseful narrative and discursive commentary . . . an intriguing fiction.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A meditative novel that builds an uncanny power through a labyrinth of memories and philosophical concepts that illuminate the narrative from within. . . . a remarkable immediacy that makes for a rare reading pleasure.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“The artful unspooling of Prado’s fraught life is richly detailed: full of surprises and paradoxes, it incorporates a vivid rendering of the Portuguese resistance to Salazar . . . . comes through on the enigmas of trying to live and write under fascism.” —Publishers Weekly
“One of the great European novels of the past few years.” —Page des libraires (France)
“A book of astonishing richness . . . a visionary writer . . . a deserved international smash.” —Le Canard enchaîné (France)
“The stuff of fine fiction . . . has the coloration and feel of Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams or Peter Handke’s Crossing the Sierra de Gredos.” —The Morning News
“This novel taps into some of the oldest veins of story, the primal ones of night journeys, of being stuck in place, yet adrift, and confused about life's purpose. It is full of people who have lived, even as the fullness of that is revealed only in the protagonist's drawing out of their stories. I'm not sure how much this book might teach us how to live, but it has reminded me of what it is to really read.” —Rick Simonson, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA, Book Sense quote
“As mesmerizing and dreamlike as a Wong Kar-wai film, with characters as strange and alienated as any of the filmmaker’s . . . Mercier . . . is a master at mixing ideas and plot. . . . Prado’s ruminative autobiography [is] reminiscent of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations or Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. . . . unforgettable moments of crystalline, even poetic, insight.” —Bookforum
“A sensation. The best book of the last ten years . . . A novel of incredible clarity and beauty.” —Bücher (Germany)
“Powerful, serious, and brilliant . . . constitutes one of the true revelations of this season.” —L’Humanité (France)
“Impressive . . . a life lesson and a model of lucidity.” —La Quinzaine (France)
“Mercier draws together all the big existential questions in this masterful novel. . . . visionary.” —Volkskrant (Netherlands)
“Mercier has erected a monument to literature. And he has done it wonderfully, with the full weight of his philosophical knowledge.” —La Stampa (Italy)
“Absolutely recommended.” —De Telegraaf (Netherlands)
“A novel for people with great expectations for literature . . . written with brilliance, incomparable talent and obvious artistic power, and a wide knowledge of the human nature, mind, and soul.” —Berlingske Tidende (Denmark)
“Taps into some of the oldest veins of story, the primal ones of night journeys, of a distant land, of being stuck in-place, and yet adrift . . . Pascal Mercier does all of this and more, masterfully, alertly, intelligently. . . . I’m not sure how much this book might teach any of us how to live—that’s for anyone to decide—but it has helped remind this reader of what it is to really read.”—Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company“Contains style, narrative richness and philosophy . . . I read it in three nights. Then I was convinced to change my life.” —Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)
“A serious and beautiful book about the examined life.” —Le Monde (France)
“Mercier has founded a new artistic tradition in the novel.” —La Quinzaine littéraire (France)
“A book in which poetry and philosophy are intimately intertwined.” —Tages-Anzeiger (Switzerland)
“Both philosophical and spell-binding . . . a novel to absorb . . . One and a half million German readers can’t be wrong: Philosophy can go to the heart!” —Politiken (Denmark)
“An existentialist novel with a post-modern view of the self, a well-researched taste of the magical city Lisbon, but also a searching picture of an unusual and rarely described protagonist’s life in it’s most appalling and life-affirming phase.” —Nordjyske Stiftstidende (Denmark)
“Exceptional . . . a thriller of a philosophical novel. You cheat yourself by not bringing this book with you for the holiday.” —Weekendavisen (Denmark)
“Beautiful . . . An elegant narrative of the exploration of one human being by another. . . . throw[s] as much light as it seems possible on the inexhaustible question: What does it mean to be a human being, and to what extent can we know each other—and ourselves?” —Børsen (Denmark)
“You are not the same person you were before you started reading. This is very likely the biggest compliment you can give a novel—and this book deserves it.” —Kristeligt Dagblad (Denmark)
“An intense novel, an initiation into the interior life for refined palates.” —La Repubblica (Italy)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
95 of 99 people found the following review helpful
By Nim Sudo
Format:Hardcover
I'll admit that the book might not sound that interesting. A schoolteacher having a sort of midlife crisis picks up a book of philosophical essays that somehow speak to him that were written by a Portuguese doctor who died 30 years ago, drops everything in his life, starts to learn Portuguese and translate the book, and travels to Lisbon to interview people who knew the writer. The writer was an intense personality who made a deep impression on the people around him, who are more than happy to talk about him, if only to bring him back to life a little through their reminiscences. As the book progresses, layers are pulled back and the protagonist penetrates deeper into the life and thoughts of the writer, eventually coming to understand his tragic end.
As dull as the book may sound, I couldn't put it down. I found it to be a thought-provoking meditation on life, arranged in such a way that one was eager to see what would happen next. At the same time I can understand why there were a number of negative reviews here. This book has a kind of European sensibility to it that might not appeal to the typical American audience. But if you are looking for something a bit different, I recommend giving it a try.
Note: I read the original, not the translation. The language of the original seemed to me to be kind of fancy and a bit overblown, and thus perhaps hard to translate without losing some of its elegance. But I glanced at the translation and it at least seemed pretty readable.
As dull as the book may sound, I couldn't put it down. I found it to be a thought-provoking meditation on life, arranged in such a way that one was eager to see what would happen next. At the same time I can understand why there were a number of negative reviews here. This book has a kind of European sensibility to it that might not appeal to the typical American audience. But if you are looking for something a bit different, I recommend giving it a try.
Note: I read the original, not the translation. The language of the original seemed to me to be kind of fancy and a bit overblown, and thus perhaps hard to translate without losing some of its elegance. But I glanced at the translation and it at least seemed pretty readable.
110 of 123 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Published in German in 2004, Pascal Mercier's NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON only just reached our shores in an English translation this year. Hailed as an international literary sensation (over two million copies sold worldwide) and blurbed nearly into the Western literary canon on its dust jacket, this book will almost certainly garner a collective yawn from those Americans who open its covers. Most, I suspect, will likely never finish. They will instead discover that what looks to be a mysterious story of spies and resistance to ruthless dictatorship is something far less and so slow to develop they may want to sue the reviewer from Germany's Die Welt who blurbed, "One reads this book almost breathlessly, and can hardly put it down..." One can only imagine this line being recited by Mike Myers in an old SNL Sprockets skit.
Not to say that NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON is without its merits. However, one needs to approach this book with a certain tolerance and patience as well as a literary frame of mind, comparable perhaps to tackling something by Stendahl or Henry James or Edith Wharton. The story line is of itself simple enough, if rather improbable. Raimund Gregorius is a lifelong instructor of ancient languages (Latin, Greek, Hebrew) at the same Swiss lycee in Bern where he himself had been a student. Nicknamed satirically as Mundus by his students and derisively as "the Papyrus" by his Gymnasium colleagues, Gregorius is Mr. Chips writ large: divorced, dryly unemotional, sheltered, over-intellectualized - more a walking dictionary than a human being, and reaching his life's end.
Crossing a bridge on his way to the lycee on morning, he approaches a mysterious young woman who appears to be contemplating suicide. She steps back, only to write a phone number on the teacher's forehead. She soon disappears, but not before Gregorius learns she is Portuguese, and that fact leads him the same day to a Spanish bookstore where he encounters a book in Portuguese entitled A Goldsmith of Words by Amadeu Prado. After laboring to translate and read excerpts of Prado's book, Gregorius decides one afternoon to leave his school, his students, and his city for Lisbon where he hopes to perhaps find the mysterious woman on the bridge and the story of Prado's life.
This setup takes perhaps thirty pages. The rest concerns Gregorius's slow self-realizations about his own life as he gradually pieces together the triumphs, tragedies, and lost loves of the tortured soul who wrote the rambling essays in A Goldsmith of Words. As he proceeds to uncover Prado's story, he research calls forth memories from among those who knew him and he inadvertently restores the broken web that connected many of them. Prado's story alternates occasionally with the backdrop of Gregorius's, and the whole is frequently interspersed with what are supposed to be excerpts from Prado's book and letters to his sister, father, and lost loves. These last range from boring to insufferably self-possessed, filled with homiletic screechings and weary aphorisms that interrupt the book's story line and flow. "We humans: what do we know of one another?" Or "The world as a stage, waiting for us to produce the important and sad, funny and meaningless drama of our imaginations."Or "Life is not what we live; it is what we imagine we are living." Or my favorite: "Human beings can't bear silence; it would mean that they would bear themselves." Hard to bear, indeed.
Not surprisingly given the book's title, trains and train rides loom large in the story. They variously serve to represent flights to freedom or away from one's old life as well as periods of introspection or contemplation of significant life decisions. At one point, the entirety of a human life becomes encapsulated in Prado's use of a train trip metaphor with an unseen but presumably divine conductor. At another stage, a train trip has unmistakably Freudian overtones that lead to tragic consequences.
In the end, NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON is a story about relationships - families, friends, parents, children, siblings, lovers - and regrets. It is also a story about the influence of random, uncontrollable events and how people's choices in responding to those events affect their lives. Despite its pseudo-philosophical meanderings, Mercier's book is a modestly intriguing exploration of two over-intellectualized souls searching for their path through life and ultimately realizing what they've missed by living almost exclusively in a world of words and thoughts. The "goldsmith of words" dies in the gilded cage of his own construction.
Not to say that NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON is without its merits. However, one needs to approach this book with a certain tolerance and patience as well as a literary frame of mind, comparable perhaps to tackling something by Stendahl or Henry James or Edith Wharton. The story line is of itself simple enough, if rather improbable. Raimund Gregorius is a lifelong instructor of ancient languages (Latin, Greek, Hebrew) at the same Swiss lycee in Bern where he himself had been a student. Nicknamed satirically as Mundus by his students and derisively as "the Papyrus" by his Gymnasium colleagues, Gregorius is Mr. Chips writ large: divorced, dryly unemotional, sheltered, over-intellectualized - more a walking dictionary than a human being, and reaching his life's end.
Crossing a bridge on his way to the lycee on morning, he approaches a mysterious young woman who appears to be contemplating suicide. She steps back, only to write a phone number on the teacher's forehead. She soon disappears, but not before Gregorius learns she is Portuguese, and that fact leads him the same day to a Spanish bookstore where he encounters a book in Portuguese entitled A Goldsmith of Words by Amadeu Prado. After laboring to translate and read excerpts of Prado's book, Gregorius decides one afternoon to leave his school, his students, and his city for Lisbon where he hopes to perhaps find the mysterious woman on the bridge and the story of Prado's life.
This setup takes perhaps thirty pages. The rest concerns Gregorius's slow self-realizations about his own life as he gradually pieces together the triumphs, tragedies, and lost loves of the tortured soul who wrote the rambling essays in A Goldsmith of Words. As he proceeds to uncover Prado's story, he research calls forth memories from among those who knew him and he inadvertently restores the broken web that connected many of them. Prado's story alternates occasionally with the backdrop of Gregorius's, and the whole is frequently interspersed with what are supposed to be excerpts from Prado's book and letters to his sister, father, and lost loves. These last range from boring to insufferably self-possessed, filled with homiletic screechings and weary aphorisms that interrupt the book's story line and flow. "We humans: what do we know of one another?" Or "The world as a stage, waiting for us to produce the important and sad, funny and meaningless drama of our imaginations."Or "Life is not what we live; it is what we imagine we are living." Or my favorite: "Human beings can't bear silence; it would mean that they would bear themselves." Hard to bear, indeed.
Not surprisingly given the book's title, trains and train rides loom large in the story. They variously serve to represent flights to freedom or away from one's old life as well as periods of introspection or contemplation of significant life decisions. At one point, the entirety of a human life becomes encapsulated in Prado's use of a train trip metaphor with an unseen but presumably divine conductor. At another stage, a train trip has unmistakably Freudian overtones that lead to tragic consequences.
In the end, NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON is a story about relationships - families, friends, parents, children, siblings, lovers - and regrets. It is also a story about the influence of random, uncontrollable events and how people's choices in responding to those events affect their lives. Despite its pseudo-philosophical meanderings, Mercier's book is a modestly intriguing exploration of two over-intellectualized souls searching for their path through life and ultimately realizing what they've missed by living almost exclusively in a world of words and thoughts. The "goldsmith of words" dies in the gilded cage of his own construction.
76 of 84 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I'm a bit surprised by some of the negative reviews this book is getting. What a wonderful novel, thought provoking and beautiful, about the power of language and it's ability to draw out the mysterious depths of a human life. Mercier has created such a haunting character in Mundus, his anxieties about the future and the past are heartbreaking and all too familiar. I found it to be thouroughly engrossing, one of the best written novels i've read in quite some time; emotional, romantic, evocative, and- unlike some novels of its kind- not preachy, but searching, earnest. It possesses such a sadness and such a hope... in a world where entertainment ((even the novel nowadays, what a shame)) is so deeply mired in 'what happens next', Night Train to Lisbon's unapologetic introspection is a welcome change of pace.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
I regret that the author did not have the guts to finish the book,...
Reading this book was a grat pleasure, until the end. Then. I was very disappointed mainly the guy never tried to call the phone number that was written on his forhead by the... Read more
Published 23 days ago by Neda Vidakovic
3.0 out of 5 stars
Philosophy guides a Life
Start with the most boring life on continental Europe who knows ancient DEAD languages like the back of his hand, add a Portugese revolutionary/medical doctor in love with writing... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Marsha A. Fuller
5.0 out of 5 stars
Atmospheric novel with lots to ponder on
This book gave me so much pleasure that I had to ration it out so that it would not end. On every page there was something to stimulate my own thinking about life, our purpose in... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Ioanna in Europe
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rating for Night Train to Lisbon
I loved the book! It is exquisitely written and I was unable to put it down.
It arrived in a short time and in perfect condition.
Thank you so much.
It arrived in a short time and in perfect condition.
Thank you so much.
Published 1 month ago by Sheila Sellers
5.0 out of 5 stars
Evocation of the power of language
Wonderful story of a Classics professor with a lifelong love affair with language and how he responds when life throws him clues that are as fascinating to interpret as his texts. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Amy Hannon
5.0 out of 5 stars
2 translations?
Very puzzled: I first read a translation by Barbara Harshav - and loved it, in large measure because of its poetic prose. Read more
Published 4 months ago by U. F. Kocks
5.0 out of 5 stars
I would love to review this book for my Readers group!
My Readers group could not deal with a book this long, but I loved its richness; poetry, history, politics, language.
Published 4 months ago by Eleanor
4.0 out of 5 stars
absorbing and unusual
I enjoyed this book. different from most others and an absorbing probing into what is really important to each of us
Published 5 months ago by momsreview
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very thought provoking
What a pleasure to read a novel of ideas. Not a quick read, but a very satisfying one. And one that promotes introspection on the part of the reader.
Published 5 months ago by KHK
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Snap out of it"
... and so he did! Gregorius is a professor of languages who goes through life methodically, introspectively. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Mena Bielow
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