Nachtzug nach Lissabon

A philosopher – Pascal Mercier – writes a book, how awful! No, how awesome in this case. I expected some esoteric book for women in their midlife-crisis. How good that I overcame my prejudices. The protagonist, Raimond Gregorius, is a boring and conservative man. Not average, since he is an unrivalled expert in classic languages like Latin and Hebrew. Bu choice he just teaches at a secondary school in Bern and considers himself happy – without any excitements. Until he meets a woman who writes in an act of madness a phone number on his forehead and responds softly in her mother tongue. She speaks Português ( somehow like: Pourtougesh). This soft sound sticks to his mind. This is the very over-constructed beginning. He as a philologist wants to learn this nice sounding roman language and buys book from an unknown man – Amadeu Pardo in a second-hand bookstore. With Latin knowledge and a Portuguese dictionary he starts to translate it and becomes readily involved. Now the real book starts, which are actually two books. It is the history of Gregorius and the life and thinking of Amadeu Pardo. Gregorius learns about him with his book which is cited in large portions. This book is fictional, but it so interesting that I always asked myself: did he exist? In fact this story within the story is much more interesting than the developing disturbance of Gregorius. He – the boring teacher -decides to escape his common life. He takes the night train to Lisbon and starts to dig out the people which can give him testimony of Madeu Pardo’s life. He just just realises that he has only one life and there is not much left. In this way the inner anxiety correolates with Pardo’s questions and answers.. Actually the answers are just new questions. This is the good part of the book: it asks many questions. It asks about fear, about self-assurance, about freedom to choose and, of course, it is about a middle-aged man who asks himself what did he accomplish so far and what is left. For me it is an optimistic book! And it is well written in a sophisticated German. I am not sure how it will sound in other languages. The sound of the book was important to me.