Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon has sat on my bookshelf since January 2008. Then I almost gave up on it after 100 pages.
Raimund Gregorius teaches classical languages at a Swiss lycee and has an otherwise routine, and dull, existence. Until one day, walking to school, he encounters a Portuguese woman on a bridge who is so distraught that Gregorius believes she’s going to jump. Instead she tears up a letter, throws it over the edge, panics and writes a phone number of Gregorius’ forehead.
Sometimes the smallest things change us, sometimes the most bizarre.
The encounter rattles Gregorius out of his quotidian life and he ends up on a night train to Lisbon, where he proceeds to re-construct the life of Amadeu de Prado, a doctor conflicted by religion, love, friendship, dictatorship and betrayals of many kinds. Based only on a slim volume of Prado’s published work, Gregorius finds family members, neighbours, and friends who all contribute bits and pieces to his patchwork understanding of what made Amadeu de Prado tick. Thankfully Prado was an interesting a guy.
I can’t match up my feelings of the book with the blurbs.
“A book of astonishing richness … visionary … a deserved international smash.” , Le Canard encha√Æne
“One reads this book almost breathlessly, can hardly put it down … A handbook for the soul, intellect and heart.” , Die Welt
I don’t share the enthusiasm of the French and German reviewers of the time, but Mercier has certainly provided a philosophical tale of repression, resistance and the struggle of men to achieve something memorable. I made it all the way through the book because of Amadeu. Gregorius’ measured uncovering of this figure was rewarding. There are lots of passages that are still resonating with me, but overall this was a slow read.