I admit I picked up this book by chance. With five minutes to pick three books in a “3 for the price of 2” offer in a London bookshop, the word “Lisbon” in the title and Isabel Allende’s quote on the cover “A treat for the mind. One of the best books I have read in a long time” got me (read my review of The Sum of Our Days to see how much I adore Isabel Allende). Well, it was wonderful serendipity.
This is a splendid book from a Swiss writer I confess I did not know. Describing it as a thriller for the intellect sounds pretentious but is accurate. The story is curious: a profoundly staid, middle-aged teacher of classics in Bern suddenly decides, for only the flimsiest of motives, to drop out of his measured life, with no preparation and no explanation to anyone, in order to follow the trail of a mysterious writer in Lisbon. The heart of the book is Raimund Gregorius’s quest to discover the story of this fascinating philosopher and how he came to write what Raimund feels are poetic and profound ideas about life and existence. Like many such quests, the real story is as much the transformation of the searcher as the revelation of the truth he seeks.
Surprisingly, for a book supposedly about the mind, this is a page turner. The characters are so intriguing, the plot twists so fascinating, that it has the quality of all great novels: you can’t wait to re-immerse yourself in the writer’s world each time you pick up the book and feel bereft when you reach the last page.
My only criticism is the translation from the original German. As a translator myself, I have sympathy with the poorly paid and over-stressed literary translator but, at the very least, the publishers should have taken more care with proof-reading and editing the English version. There are odd shifts between UK and US usage (either is fine but not both), occasional jarring literal translations and too many irritating typos. The translation is pedestrian but not crass and is heavily marred by editorial sloppiness. More importantly, this novel is very much about language and the communication of big ideas. I sometimes had the feeling that the poetry and brilliance of the German text were lost in translation. Having said all that, Mercier’s book is a delight, a work that will resonate in your imagination long after you have finished it even if, like me, you can’t read it in the original.
This is a splendid book from a Swiss writer I confess I did not know. Describing it as a thriller for the intellect sounds pretentious but is accurate. The story is curious: a profoundly staid, middle-aged teacher of classics in Bern suddenly decides, for only the flimsiest of motives, to drop out of his measured life, with no preparation and no explanation to anyone, in order to follow the trail of a mysterious writer in Lisbon. The heart of the book is Raimund Gregorius’s quest to discover the story of this fascinating philosopher and how he came to write what Raimund feels are poetic and profound ideas about life and existence. Like many such quests, the real story is as much the transformation of the searcher as the revelation of the truth he seeks.
Surprisingly, for a book supposedly about the mind, this is a page turner. The characters are so intriguing, the plot twists so fascinating, that it has the quality of all great novels: you can’t wait to re-immerse yourself in the writer’s world each time you pick up the book and feel bereft when you reach the last page.
My only criticism is the translation from the original German. As a translator myself, I have sympathy with the poorly paid and over-stressed literary translator but, at the very least, the publishers should have taken more care with proof-reading and editing the English version. There are odd shifts between UK and US usage (either is fine but not both), occasional jarring literal translations and too many irritating typos. The translation is pedestrian but not crass and is heavily marred by editorial sloppiness. More importantly, this novel is very much about language and the communication of big ideas. I sometimes had the feeling that the poetry and brilliance of the German text were lost in translation. Having said all that, Mercier’s book is a delight, a work that will resonate in your imagination long after you have finished it even if, like me, you can’t read it in the original.
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