Still, there is very much to like about the story of a man who expresses that "given that we can only live a small part of what there is within us, what happens to the rest?" The answer to this mystery might very well be that Raimund Gregorious decided to give vent to a corner of himself never previously allowed expression while attempting to transform himself in Portugal. In the years afterwards, I fled whenever somebody began to understand me. That has subsided. But one thing remained: I don’t want anybody to understand me completely . I want to go through life unknown. The blindness of others is my safety and my freedom.” Mercier, P., Night Train to Lisbon, London: Atlantic Books, 2019 But oh yes, I was forgetting, I need to justify myself. I am not, of course, comparing the very mild form of censorship that Goodreads has recently been practising with the horrors of the Salazar regime. That would be an absurd insult to all the brave people who resisted this appalling dictator, whose unashamedly Fascist government managed to cling to power until 1974, four years after Salazar's death. I would like to know more about how they succeeded in doing that. Presumably there were enough people on the inside supporting them, and they were sufficiently brutal about eliminating anyone on the outside who spoke up against them, that the large mass of citizens who just wanted to live quiet lives figured it was better to accept the status quo. Night Train to Lisbon spends considerable time contemplating ideas, exploring on one hand Gregorious' contemplation of self and the other de Prado's journal and philosophies. [3] Epigraphs include Michel de Montaigne, Essais, Second Book, I, “De l’inconstance de nos actions” and Fernando Pessoa, Livro do Desassossego (Portuguese: Book of Disquiet/Restlessness).

Night Train to Lisbon (Mercier) - LitLovers Night Train to Lisbon (Mercier) - LitLovers

Prado’s book and other writings are an act of self exploration of the kind most of us indulge in when we’re in our late teens and twenties. He had a breakdown as a young man and clearly still suffers from depression. He also suffers from verbosity, pomposity and self-obsession. Throughout the book, I couldn’t decide if his writings were deliberately pretentious, by which I mean that this is who the author wanted him to be, or if the author is indulging in a cathartic exercise himself. I still don’t know. 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. Fazit: Guter Beginn und grausam starkes Nachlassen in der Qualität. Das Potenzial der Geschichte wurde nie ausgeschöpft. Als Gesamtroman ist dieses Werk total entbehrlich, weist enorme Schwächen im Plot und in den Figuren auf, flankiert von nutzlosem pseudointellektuellem Geschwafel, das nicht wirklich zur Geschichte passt. Ich frage mich tatsächlich, wieso so ein schlechter Zafon-Verschnitt einen derartigen literarischen Erfolg feiern konnte.

Night Train to Lisbon

Words and names play an obvious role for the philologist, but even with that and, for example, the repeated extended chess games Gregorius gets involved in the novel is anything but purely intellectual and dry: down to Gregorius' students or the woman who teaches him Portuguese, as well as those who knew Amadeu de Prado, Mercier offers rich characters and frequently inspired small details and events. Night Train to Lisbon was made into a film in 2013, directed by Bille August, and starring Jeremy Irons and Mélanie Laurent

Night Train to Lisbon - Wikipedia

Carson Weatherall is embarking on the first real adventure of her life. It's 1936 and the wealthy young American woman is spending the summer with her aunt and uncle in a Portuguese villa, after a tour of the continent. She has just decided she isn't very adventurous after all, when she meets Alec Breve, a young British scientist, aboard the train to Lisbon. The two fall in love, and spend most her stay involved in a blissful love affair. As the trip comes to an end, Carson receives some devastating news from her uncle, who works with the British Defense Ministry. He has evidence that Alec is a member of a Nazi sympathizer group, and has been passing technical information to Germany. In Lisbon, Carson and Alec begin an intense love affair, but their bliss is threatened when Carson's uncle reveals that Alec might be a spy for Germany. He insists that it is essential that Alec be trapped and brought to justice, and the only person who can deliver an unsuspecting Alec to the proper authorities is Carson. Desperate to believe in her new love -- and terrified of discovering she has fallen for a traitor -- Carson must choose whether to prove her lover innocent or leave him to face the consequences on his own.Night Train to Lisbon is a philosophical novel by Swiss writer Pascal Mercier. It recounts the travels of Swiss Classics instructor Raimund Gregorius as he explores the life of Amadeu de Prado, a Portuguese doctor, during António de Oliveira Salazar's right-wing dictatorship in Portugal. Prado is a serious thinker whose active mind becomes evident in a series of his notes collected and read by Gregorius. I LOVED this book. I've been running around quoting "Given that we can live only a small part of what there is in us - what happens to the rest?" O único aspecto abonador se revela no fato que autora consegue descrever uma ou outra coisa sobre a cultura portuguesa, porém mesmo isso se perde no marasmo dos outros fatos. Pascal Mercier offers an astonishing philosophical narrative about the possibility of truly understanding another person, the ability of words to define our very selves and making a journey into the depths of our shared humanity. Night Train to Lisbon compels a reader to look inwards. So of course I loved this exploration of how a character can walk away from his life, how he can explore, through words and conversations, another life (not just the present).