'If you liked Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind, you'll love international bestseller, Night Train to Lisbon.' Image
Raimund Gregorius is a mild-mannered, middle-aged professor of ancient languages. One morning, as he is teaching, he is seized by a restlessness that drives him to abandon his classroom then and there - shocking his students, and surprising even himself. His unusual impulsiveness is driven by two chance encounters - with a mysterious Portuguese woman in a red coat; and with a book he finds hidden in a dusty corner of a second-hand bookshop, the journal of an enigmatic Portuguese aristocrat, Amadeu de Prado.
With the book as his talisman, Raimund boards the night train to Lisbon on a journey to find out more about Prado, whose words haunt and compel him. Gradually, a picture of an extraordinary man emerges: a difficult, brilliant, charismatic figure, a doctor and a poet, and a rebel against Salazar's dictatorship. And as Prado's story comes to light so, too, Gregorius himself begins his life anew. Hurtling through the dark, Night Train to Lisbon is a rich tale, wonderfully told, propelled by the mystery at its heart.
'A meditative novel that builds uncanny power... Night Train to Lisbon maintains a remarkable immediacy that makes for a rare reading pleasure.' San Francisco Chronicle
'One reads this book almost breathlessly, hardly able to put it down... A handbook for the soul, mind and heart.' Die Welt