The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel

The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel

Hardcover
3.03

Durch das Verwenden dieser Links unterstützt du READO. Wir erhalten eine Vermittlungsprovision, ohne dass dir zusätzliche Kosten entstehen.

Beschreibung

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Fifteen years after The Life of Pi, Yann Martel is taking us on another long journey. Fans of his Man Booker Prize–winning novel will recognize familiar themes from that seafaring phenomenon, but the itinerary in this imaginative new book is entirely fresh. . . . Martel’s writing has never been more charming.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR

In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artifact that—if he can find it—would redefine history. Traveling in one of Europe’s earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this strange treasure.

Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds himself at the center of a mystery of his own and drawn into the consequences of Tomás’s quest.

Fifty years on, a Canadian senator takes refuge in his ancestral village in northern Portugal, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. But he arrives with an unusual companion: a chimpanzee. And there the century-old quest will come to an unexpected conclusion.

The High Mountains of Portugal—part quest, part ghost story, part contemporary fable—offers a haunting exploration of great love and great loss. Filled with tenderness, humor, and endless surprise, it takes the reader on a road trip through Portugal in the last century—and through the human soul.

Praise for The High Mountains of Portugal

“Just as ambitious, just as clever, just as existential and spiritual [as Life of Pi] . . . a book that rewards your attention . . . an excellent book club choice.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“There’s no denying the simple pleasures to be had in The High Mountains of Portugal.”—Chicago Tribune

“Charming . . . Most Martellian is the boundless capacity for parable. . . . Martel knows his strengths: passages about the chimpanzee and his owner brim irresistibly with affection and attentiveness.”—The New Yorker

“A rich and rewarding experience . . . [Martel] spins his magic thread of hope and despair, comedy and pathos.”—USA Today

“I took away indelible images from High Mountains, enchanting and disturbing at the same time. . . . As whimsical as Martel’s magic realism can be, grief informs every step of the book’s three journeys. In the course of the novel we burrow ever further into the heart of an ape, pure and threatening at once, our precursor, ourselves.”—NPR

“Refreshing, surprising and filled with sparkling moments of humor and insight.”—The Dallas Morning News

“We’re fortunate to have brilliant writers using their fiction to meditate on a paradox we need urgently to consider—the unbridgeable gap and the unbreakable bond between human and animal, our impossible self-alienation from our world.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian

“[Martel packs] his inventive novel with beguiling ideas. What connects an inept curator to a haunted pathologist to a smitten politician across more than seventy-five years is the author’s ability to conjure up something uncanny at the end.”—The Boston Globe

“A fine home, and story, in which to find oneself.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
Haupt-Genre
N/A
Sub-Genre
N/A
Format
Hardcover
Seitenzahl
352
Preis
N/A

Beiträge

1
Alle
3

This book leaves me a bit puzzled. I don't really know what to think of it. It consists of three parts which are very loosely connected and could in fact be read as three separate stories. The only two elements they have in common are a small village in the High Mountains of Portugal (which turn out to be not so very high) and a chimpanzee. The first part - set in 1904 - is about a young man who lost his wife and child and is now walking backwards as a kind of mourning. He finds out about an artefact hidden in a small village in the High Mountains of Portugal and travels there with one of the first automobiles. This part wass often quite funny but after a while it got a bit tedious. The second part was the weirdest. It starts with a pathologist working on New Years Eve in 1939. His wife visits him and tells him her theory on Agatha Christie's novels being modern versions of the Bible. Once his wife leaves him alone, an old woman from the said village arrives with her dead husband's body, asking the pathologist to tell her how her husband lived. That was when the story got very odd. The final part was my favourite. It is about a retired Canadian senator who rescues an ape from a sanctuary and moves with him to the village mentioned above. I'm not sure what this novel is supposed to be about which makes it so hard to rate. The three stars I gave it are just the average of the ratings for the three stories: 3 stars for the first one, 2 for the second and four for the final one. The style is similar to the author's masterpiece, Life of Pi: But what was great in that work, the emuneration of items and activities, often makes the High Mountians of Portugal a bit lengthy. There's also the element that leaves the reader wondering whether the story could be true or not. This worked well with the first and the last story, but clearly not with the middle one. (I received a free digital copy via Netgalley/the publisher. Thanks for the opportunity!)

Beitrag erstellen