Night Train To Lisbon

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The protagonist, a teacher of dead languages in Bern, is inspired by this book he comes across to quit his job and travel to Portugal to find out more about the writer of the book, Prado. Many reviewers who hated this novel have commented how utterly new-ageishly purile the comments in the book are, more like the thoughts of an emo-goth teen than the profound workings of the inner mind of brilliant doctor-cum-resistance-fighter. Night Train to Lisbon is a novel of ideas that reads like a thriller: an unsentimental journey that seems to transcend time and space. Every character, every scene, is evoked with an incomparable economy and a tragic nobility redolent of the mysterious hero, whom we only ever encounter through the eyes of others." - Daniel Johnson, The Telegraph Night Train to Lisbon tells the story of mild-mannered, middle-aged Classics scholar Raimund Gregorius. When, one afternoon, he walks out of his class while in the middle of giving a lesson, his uncharacteristic impulsiveness surprises him as much as his students. This break from his usually predictable routine is driven by two chance encounters that morning on his way to work - the first with a mysterious Portuguese woman, and the second with a book discovered in a forgotten corner of an old bookshop, the journal of an enigmatic Portuguese aristocrat. With the book as his talisman, Mundus finds himself boarding the night train to Lisbon on a journey to find out more about its author, Amadeu del Prado - who was this man whose words both haunt and compel him, seeming somehow clairvoyant?

Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier - The New Letter - Night Train to Lisbon - Pascal Mercier - The New

Magical. Profoundly moving. Overwhelmingly beautiful. Compelling exploration of consciousness and the inner life. He becomes curious about Prado and, once in Lisbon, decides to speak to those who knew him, to find out more about his life. Almost without exception, Prado’s friends and family are open to discussing their relationship with Prado. Unlikely? Yes, it’s all very unlikely and yet....During the course of the story we see how the fictitious author wrestled with the Big Questions of good and evil and love. As the narrator learns of someone else’s life, he reflects upon his own. He gets new glasses and finds out how poor his old ones were – a metaphor for what is happening to him.

Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier | Book Review Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier | Book Review

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. Vanity's] an unrecognized form of stupidity... you have to forget the cosmic meaninglessness of all our acts to be able to be vain and that’s a glaring form of stupidity.”

He winds up in a Spanish bookstore -- familiar because Spanish had been his former wife's field -- and stumbles across a Portuguese book there, written by an Amadeu de Prado and published in 1975, 'A Goldsmith of Words'. Rest your head in one city and wake up in another with night trains in Europe. There’s a reason people like to travel by starlight – and it’s not just the extra element of excitement it brings. Travelling at night means you won’t lose half a day of your trip – just shut your eyes and you’ll be at your next destination in no time. Sleeper trains can also be a real money saver as they’re your hotel for the night too. Tram: Perhaps the most typical means of transport in Lisbon, it has five lines and is a great way to explore the city. Especially known is the number 28, which runs through the historic centre. Walking over a bridge on the way to his school in Bern, Raimund Gregorius, a Swiss professor of philosophy, notices a young woman in a red coat standing on the railing, about to leap. Dropping his briefcase, he runs and pulls her down. She helps him gather the papers that have spilled from his briefcase and accompanies him to the school where he teaches. But instead of waiting to talk, she leaves during the middle of his class, without her coat.

Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel: Mercier, Pascal, Harshav Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel: Mercier, Pascal, Harshav

Night Train to Lisbon was made into a film in 2013, directed by Bille August, and starring Jeremy Irons and Mélanie Laurent My initial view of Night Train to Lisbon is that the reader is almost forced to follow the pattern of the novel's main character, Raimund Gregorius, attempting to explicate a book much like Raimund did when trying to comprehend the writings of a Portuguese doctor, Amadeu de Prado. Dr. Prado had been active in the resistance against Salazar the Portuguese dictator & Prado's words seized Raimund's imagination, causing him to suddenly flee his secure position as a teacher of classics & to entrain for Lisbon. A lot of Prado’s scribbles deal with our inherent inability to know other people, and of the struggle to know our own selves as honestly as possible. Even language is suspect as too weighted down with the overused dross of cliché to give us the key to this honesty. And yet, the protagonist is a teacher and lover of dead languages. If we take away language, what do we have? As the story progresses, the protagonist starts to experience increasing bouts of dizziness, as if he is losing his sense of place in the world. But just how are we supposed to react to this? The author of the mystery-book was a doctor; after treating one of the worst figures in the Salazar-regime he does penance by trying to help out the resistance. not a 'deep' book, but not pure 'fluff', either. one of those stories that tugs at your heart-strings.

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 Trains in Europe | European Sleeper Trains | Trainline Night Trains in Europe | European Sleeper Trains | Trainline

Both visitors who arrive at the Lisbon airport and those who do it by train or bus to Santa Apolonia, Oriente or Sete Rios stations have different transport options to get to the city centre. Several means of transport can also be used to move around the destination.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. It was hard to put my finger on what was weak about the writing - a bit too obvious (though i was taken in!) and characters rasther stereotypical .... but it did seem quite strange. The novel does attempt to probe the motivation to change course in life & to comprehend the forces that determine behavior, as when he reads from a Prado letter: I start trembling at the thought of the unplanned & unknown but inevitable & unstoppable force with which parents leave traces in their children that, like traces of branding, can never be erased. The outlines of parental will & fear are written with a white-hot stylus in the souls of children who are helpless & ignorant of what is happening to them. We need a whole life to find & decipher the branded text & we can never be sure that we have understood it. Raimund's enchantment with the life of Amadeu de Prado, who had enjoyed a brilliant childhood, causes him to work at translating the thoughts of the man, while pursuing clues to the man's later life in Lisbon, always it seems in search of deeper meaning about the moral decisions that had been made & which ultimately determined Dr. Prado's fate. 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.