The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel

The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel

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

In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named TomÃ¡s discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artifact thatâ€”if he can find itâ€”would redefine history. Traveling in one of Europeâ€™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 TomÃ¡sâ€™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 Portugalâ€”part quest, part ghost story, part contemporary fableâ€”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 centuryâ€”and through the human soul.

Praise for The High Mountains of Portugal

â€œJust 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.â€â€”San Francisco Chronicle

â€œThereâ€™s no denying the simple pleasures to be had in The High Mountains of Portugal.â€â€”Chicago Tribune

â€œCharming . . . 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.â€â€”The New Yorker

â€œA rich and rewarding experience . . . [Martel] spins his magic thread of hope and despair, comedy and pathos.â€â€”USA Today

â€œI took away indelible images from High Mountains, enchanting and disturbing at the same time. . . . As whimsical as Martelâ€™s magic realism can be, grief informs every step of the bookâ€™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.â€â€”NPR

â€œRefreshing, surprising and filled with sparkling moments of humor and insight.â€â€”The Dallas Morning News

â€œWeâ€™re fortunate to have brilliant writers using their fiction to meditate on a paradox we need urgently to considerâ€”the unbridgeable gap and the unbreakable bond between human and animal, our impossible self-alienation from our world. . . . [Martelâ€™s] semi-surreal, semi-absurdist mode is well suited to exploring the paradox. The moral and spiritual implications of his tale have, in the end, a quality of haunting tenderness.â€â€”Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian

â€œ[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 authorâ€™s ability to conjure up something uncanny at the end.â€â€”The Boston Globe

â€œA fine home, and story, in which to find oneself.â€â€”Minneapolis Star Tribune
Country USA
Manufacturer Spiegel & Grau
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber 1
ReleaseDate 2016-02-02
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780812997170

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Spiegel & Grau
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	1
ReleaseDate	2016-02-02
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780812997170

The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel

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