The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel

by Yann Martel

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812987034
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/29/2016
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	51,207
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Yann Martel is the author of Life of Pi, the global bestseller that won the 2002 Man Booker Prize (among other honors) and was adapted to the screen in the Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. He is also the author of the short story collection The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, the novels Self and Beatrice and Virgil, and the nonfiction work 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. Born in Spain in 1963, Martel studied philosophy at Trent University, worked at odd jobs—tree planter, dishwasher, security guard—and traveled widely before turning to writing. He lives in Saskatoon, Canada, with the writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.

Hometown:

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Date of Birth:

June 25, 1963

Place of Birth:

Salamanca, Spain

Education:

B.A. in philosophy, Trent University, Ontario, 1986

Read an Excerpt

Part One

Homeless

Tomás decides to walk.

From his modest flat on Rua São Miguel in the ill-famed Alfama district to his uncle’s stately estate in leafy Lapa, it is a good walk across much of Lisbon. It will likely take him an hour. But the morning has broken bright and mild, and the walk will soothe him. And yesterday Sabio, one of his uncle’s servants, came to fetch his suitcase and the wooden trunk that holds the documents he needs for his mission to the High Mountains of Portugal, so he has only himself to convey.

He feels the breast pocket of his jacket. Father Ulisses’ diary is there, wrapped in a soft cloth. Foolish of him to bring it along like this, so casually. It would be a catastrophe if it were lost. If he had any sense he would have left it in the trunk. But he needs extra moral support this morning, as he does every time he visits his uncle.

Even in his excitement he remembers to forgo his regular cane and take the one his uncle gave him. The handle of this cane is made of elephant ivory and the shaft of African mahogany, but it is unusual mainly because of the round pocket mirror that juts out of its side just beneath the handle. This mirror is slightly convex, so the image it reflects is quite wide. Even so, it is entirely useless, a failed idea, because a walking cane in use is by its nature in constant motion, and the image the mirror reflects is therefore too shaky and fleeting to be helpful in any way. But this fancy cane is a custom-made gift from his uncle, and every time he pays a call Tomás brings it.

He heads off down Rua São Miguel onto Largo São Miguel and then Rua de São João da Praça before turning onto Arco de Jesus—the easy perambulation of a pedestrian walking through a city he has known his whole life, a city of beauty and bustle, of commerce and culture, of challenges and rewards. On Arco de Jesus he is ambushed by a memory of Dora, smiling and reaching out to touch him. For that, the cane is useful, because memories of her always throw him off balance.

“I got me a rich one,” she said to him once, as they lay in bed in his flat.

“I’m afraid not,” he replied. “It’s my uncle who’s rich. I’m the poor son of his poor brother. Papa has been as unsuccessful in business as my uncle Martim has been successful, in exact inverse proportion.”

He had never said that to anyone, commented so flatly and truthfully about his father’s checkered career, the business plans that collapsed one after the other, leaving him further beholden to the brother who rescued him each time. But to Dora he could reveal such things.

“Oh, you say that, but rich people always have troves of money hidden away.”

He laughed. “Do they? I’ve never thought of my uncle as a man who was secretive about his wealth. And if that’s so, if I’m rich, why won’t you marry me?”

People stare at him as he walks. Some make a comment, a few in jest but most with helpful intent. “Be careful, you might trip!” calls a concerned woman. He is used to this public attention; beyond a smiling nod to those who mean well, he ignores it.

One step at a time he makes his way to Lapa, his stride free and easy, each foot lifted high, then dropped with aplomb. It is a graceful gait.

He steps on an orange peel but does not slip.

He does not notice a sleeping dog, but his heel lands just short of its tail.

He misses a step as he is going down some curving stairs, but he is holding on to the railing and he regains his footing easily.

And other such minor mishaps.

Dora’s smile dropped at the mention of marriage. She was like that; she went from the lighthearted to the deeply serious in an instant.

“No, your family would banish you. Family is everything. You cannot turn your back on yours.”

“You are my family,” he replied, looking straight at her.

She shook her head. “No, I am not.”

His eyes, for the most part relieved of the burden of directing him, relax in his skull like two passengers sitting on deck chairs at the rear of a ship. Rather than testily scrutinizing the ground all the time, they glance about dreamily. They notice the shapes of clouds and of trees. They dart after birds. They watch a horse snuffle as it pulls a cart. They come to rest on previously unnoticed architectural details in buildings. They observe the bustle of traffic on Rua Cais de Santarém. All in all, it should be a delightful morning stroll on this pleasant late-December day of the year 1904.

Dora, beautiful Dora. She worked as a servant in his uncle’s household. Tomàs noticed her right away the first time he visited his uncle after she was hired. He could hardly take his eyes off her or get her out of his mind. He made efforts to be especially courteous to her and to engage her in brief conversations over one minor matter after another. It allowed him to keep looking at her fine nose, her bright dark eyes, her small white teeth, the way she moved. Suddenly he became a frequent visitor. He could remember precisely the moment Dora realized that he was addressing her not as a servant but as a woman. Her eyes flitted up to his, their gazes locked for a moment, and then she turned away—but not before a quick complicit smile curled up a corner of her mouth.

Something great was released within him then, and the barrier of class, of status, of utter improbability and unacceptability vanished. Next visit, when he gave her his coat, their hands touched and both lingered on that touch. Matters proceeded swiftly from there. He had, until then, had experience of sexual intimacy only with a few prostitutes, occasions that had been terribly exciting and then terribly depressing. He had fled each time, ashamed of himself and vowing never to do it again. With Dora, it was terribly exciting and then terribly exciting. She played with the thick hairs of his chest as she rested her head on him. He had no desire to flee anywhere.

“Marry me, marry me, marry me,” he pleaded. “We will be each other’s wealth.”

“No, we will only be poor and isolated. You don’t know what that’s like. I do, and I don’t want you to go through it.”

Into that amorous standstill was born their little Gaspar. If it were not for his strenuous pleading, she would have been dismissed from his uncle’s household when it was discovered that she was with child. His father had been his sole supporter, telling him to live his love for Dora, in precise opposition to his uncle’s silent opprobrium. Dora was relegated to invisible duties deep within the kitchen. Gaspar lived equally invisibly in the Lobo household, invisibly loved by his father, who invisibly loved his mother.

Tomás visited as often as he decently could. Dora and Gaspar came to see him in the Alfama on her days off. They would go to a park, sit on a bench, watch Gaspar play. On those days they were like any normal couple. He was in love and happy.

As he passes a tram stop, a tram rumbles up on its rails, a transportation newness hardly three years old, shiny yellow and electric. Commuters rush forward to get on it, commuters hurry to get off it. He avoids them all—except one, into whom he crashes. After a quick interaction in which mutual apologies are proffered and accepted, he moves on.

The sidewalk has several raised cobblestones but he glides over them easily.

His foot strikes the leg of a café chair. It is bumped, nothing more.

Death took Dora and Gaspar one unyielding step at a time, the doctor summoned by his uncle expending his skills to no avail. First a sore throat and fatigue, followed by fever, chills, aches, painful swallowing, difficulty breathing, convulsions, a wild-eyed, strangled losing of the mind—until they gave out, their bodies as grey, twisted, and still as the sheets they’d thrashed in. He was there with each of them. Gaspar was five years old, Dora was twenty-four.

He did not witness his father’s death a few days later. He was in the music room of the Lobo house, sitting silently with one of his cousins, numb with grief, when his uncle entered, grim-faced. “Tomás,” he said, “I have terrible news. Silvestro, your father, has died. I have lost my only brother.” The words were only sounds but Tomás felt crushed physically, as if a great rock had fallen on him, and he keened like a wounded animal. His warm bear of a father! The man who had raised him, who had countenanced his dreams!

In the course of one week—Gaspar died on Monday, Dora on Thursday, his father on Sunday—his heart became undone like a bursting cocoon. Emerging from it came no butterfly but a grey moth that settled on the wall of his soul and stirred no farther.

There were two funerals, a paltry one for a servant girl from the provinces and her bastard son, and a rich one for a rich man’s poor brother, whose lack of material success was discreetly not mentioned.

He does not see an approaching carriage as he steps off a curb, but the driver’s cry alerts him and he scampers out of the way of the horse.

He brushes against a man standing with his back to him. He raises his hand and says, “My apologies.” The man shrugs amiably and watches him go.

One step at a time, every few steps turning his head to glance over his shoulder at what lies onward, Tomás makes his way to Lapa walking backwards.

“Why? Why are you doing this? Why don’t you walk like a normal person? Enough of this nonsense!” his uncle has cried on more than one occasion. In response Tomás has come up with good arguments in defence of his way of walking. Does it not make more sense to face the elements—the wind, the rain, the sun, the onslaught of insects, the glumness of strangers, the uncertainty of the future—with the shield that is the back of one’s head, the back of one’s jacket, the seat of one’s pants? These are our protection, our armour. They are made to withstand the vagaries of fate. Meanwhile, when one is walking backwards, one’s more delicate parts—the face, the chest, the attractive details of one’s clothing—are sheltered from the cruel world ahead and displayed only when and to whom one wants with a simple voluntary turn that shatters one’s anonymity. Not to mention arguments of a more athletic nature. What more natural way to walk downhill, he contends, than backwards? The forefeet touch down with nimble delicacy, and the calf muscles can calibrate their tensing and releasing with precision. Movement downwards is therefore elastic and without strain. And should one trip, what safer way to do so than backwards, the cushioned buttocks blunting one’s fall? Better that than to break one’s wrists in a forward tumble. And he’s not excessively stubborn about it. He does make exceptions, when climbing the many long, winding stairs of the Alfama, for example, or when he has to run.

All of these justifications his uncle waved aside impatiently. Martim Augusto Mendes Lobo is an impatient successful man. Yet he knows why Tomás walks backwards, despite his testy interrogations and his nephew’s dissembling explanations. One day Tomás overheard him talking to a visiting friend. It was the very dropping of his uncle’s voice that made him prick up his ears.

“. . . the most ridiculous scene,” his uncle was saying, sotto voce. “Imagine this: Ahead of him—that is, behind him—there is a streetlight. I call over my secretary, Benito, and we watch in silent fascination, our minds preoccupied with the same question: Will my nephew walk into the streetlight? At that moment, another pedestrian appears on the street, at the other end. This man sees Tomás walking towards him backwards. We can tell from his cocked head that my nephew’s curious way of advancing has caught his attention. I know from experience that there will be an encounter of sorts—a comment made, a jest thrown out, at the very least a bewildered stare as he passes by. Sure enough, a few steps before Tomás reaches the streetlight, the other man quickens his pace and stops him with a tap on the shoulder. Tomás turns. Benito and I cannot hear what the two say to each other, but we can watch the pantomime. The stranger points to the streetlight. Tomás smiles, nods, and brings a hand to his chest to express his gratitude. The stranger smiles back. They shake hands. With a wave to each other they depart, each going his way, the stranger down the street, and Tomás—swivelling round, moving backwards once more—up the street. He insouciantly circles the streetlight.

“Ah, but wait! It’s not over. After a few steps the other pedestrian turns his head to glance back at Tomás, and clearly he is surprised to see that he is still walking backwards. Concern can be read on his face—Careful, you’ll have an accident if you don’t watch out!—but also a measure of embarrassment because Tomás is looking his way and has seen him turn to stare, and we all know it’s rude to stare. The man quickly turns his head to face forward again, but it’s too late: He collides with the next streetlight. He hits it like a clapper hits a bell. Both Benito and I wince instinctively in sympathy. Tottering, he grimaces as he brings his hands to his face and chest. Tomás runs to help him—he runs forward. You’d think it would look normal, his forward gait, but it doesn’t. There is no bounce to his step. He advances with great, long strides, his torso moving smoothly in a straight line, as if on a conveyor belt.

“Another inaudible exchange takes place between the two men, Tomás expressing great concern, the other man waving it aside while keeping a hand pressed to his face. Tomás retrieves the man’s hat, which has fallen to the ground. With another handshake and a more muted wave, the poor man staggers off. Tomás—and Benito and I—watch him go. Only once the man has turned the corner of the street does Tomás, in his usual rearward manner, resume his course. But the incident has flustered him, evidently, because he now smartly bangs into the streetlight he so artfully avoided a minute earlier. Rubbing the back of his head, he turns to glare at it.

Reading Group Guide

Questions and Answers with Yann Martel

Goodreads: One of the most intriguing things in The High Mountains of Portugal is the habit of Tomás, and later other characters, to walk backward following the deaths of loved ones. You write that for Tomás this is a personal objection—-to God—-and that later it becomes a tradition of the villagers of Tuizelo. Do you think grief is intensely private, or is there value in traditions that unite us in our grief?

Yann Martel: Grief is an appallingly solitary experience. What rips one person open may well be something that others merely glance at in a newspaper and feel nothing for. We shield ourselves against pain; we’re very adept at moving on when it comes to the pain of others—-it’s a natural defense mechanism—-until pain hits us in the middle of the chest like a well—thrown spear. Then you stagger and can’t imagine moving on. So yes, any tradition that helps lighten grief has value, although I suspect it’s never enough. There’s no trick that can make pain go away entirely. Time is a soother, of course, but time is also the great eroder. Time makes everything go away, pain and grief, but also life itself. I think what helps with grief is a belief -system that places it in a greater context, that invests it with meaning. Because that’s the killing part, when grief is meaningless. And so Tomás walks backward, a reaction as absurd as the grief he has to endure.

Goodreads: Are the High Mountains of Portugal your ideal setting because they are, by name, an exaggeration? “An act of national vanity”? The setting in your novel echoes some of the ideas about truth, storytelling, and expectation. Can you talk about the importance of names as they relate to our interpretation? How did you think about the names in the story as you were writing?

YM: The High Mountains of Portugal have no mountains, as various characters in the novel discover. And yet these characters have aspirations; they wish to climb mountains. And they do. Tomás wants to climb a mountain to conquer it, out of pride, hurt, mournful madness. Peter quite contentedly lives on a mountain, in a state of blessed detachment. Dr. Lozora has faith that there are mountains. The High Mountains in my novel are a place of heightened being; they are mountains in the mind.
Other names in the novel are also the result of careful mulling on my part, not that readers will necessarily see that. Peter Tovy because Peter was a disciple of Jesus, and Tovy is a Jewish Portuguese name, as is Lozora. Tomás because an earlier Thomas expressed doubts about Jesus. And so on.

Goodreads: How did the idea for The High Mountains of Portugal come to you? One of the things I love about it is how it makes many of the same points over generations, but in very different scenarios. Was the novel initially conceived as these three very different parts, or did it evolve into that? Can you talk about what ideas excited you as you became immersed in this work?

YM: I started writing a novel when I was at university. It featured a crucifix, a quest, an animal (a talking dog), a setting in Portugal. But I was too young, too unlearned in the craft of writing to know how to pull it off. The patient died on the operating table, so to speak. I moved on. Twenty—five years later, I started writing The High Mountains of Portugal, and something of that early novel showed itself, in an archaeological way. But new elements came into play, too. The automobile, the Agatha Christie murder mysteries, the autopsy, and so on. I don’t know if I’m any more learned in the craft of writing—-I still feel like an apprentice foolishly playing with powerful magic potions—-but this second time round the novel came together. What got me going was a casual observation I made one day: In most editions of the Gospels, there are chapter headings. Despite the accounts of the life of Jesus being quite short, despite some episodes of it being recounted in one sentence and most often in just one or two paragraphs, nonetheless there are all these chapter headings. It occurred to me that they provided a summary of the life of Jesus, and that life, whether one believes in Jesus or not, in many ways resembles the life of all of us: We are born, we grow up, we try our best, we die. I wondered to myself if I could write a novel using these chapter headings. What kind of life would my characters live if they existed in rough parallel to the events in Jesus’ life? Quickly the narrative broke into three distinct parts. I can’t remember when that happened exactly. It just did. Three—a symbolic number. And each part of the novel took on its own nature in an organic way. I did my usual research, on early automobiles, on the slave trade, on Agatha Christie, on chimpanzees, etc. This research gave me new ideas and new avenues of research. In the end, I eliminated the chapter headings, but the novel was there.

Interview questions attributed to Goodreads are from an interview between Heather Scott Partington and Yann Martel that appeared on Goodreads in February 2016 (goodreads.com/interviews/show/1100.Yann_Martel) and are reprinted here by permission of Goodreads.

1. The High Mountains of Portugal, as we come to learn, do not contain high mountains. Why do you think Martel chose The High Mountains of Portugal as the title for his novel? In a novel that uses allegory, is there an allegorical meaning to the High Mountains? You might also discuss the way the setting works within each of the three parts of the novel.

2. At the end of Part One, finding the object he was looking for does not bring Tomás the satisfaction he was expecting. Why do you think that is? How do you understand Tomás’s words to Father Abraão, “Father, I need you!”?

3. When Peter Tovy’s son, Ben, sees the crucifix, he says, “This is crazy. What’s with all the apes?” What is with all the apes?

4. Martel titles the three parts of his novel “Homeless,” “Homeward,” and “Home.” Discuss the role that home plays in the novel and why he might have given the parts these titles. How is Tomás, in Part One, homeless? How do you understand “homeward” in Part Two? How is Peter Tovy, in Part Three, home?

5. In Part Two, Maria Lozora encourages her husband to read the novels of Agatha Christie to bring him closer to the Gospels. How convincing is her description of Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries as being similar to the -Gospels?

6. Maria Lozora, commenting on Jesus’ use of parable, a literary device, asks “Why would Truth use the tools of fiction?” Why indeed?

7. Maria Castro asks Dr. Lozora to perform an autopsy on her husband, but she asks him to tell her not how he died but how he lived. Discuss the objects found in Rafael Castro’s body during the autopsy. What might they represent about how her husband lived? What do you make of the two animals found in Rafael’s chest? Imagine you were the body undergoing the autopsy. What objects might Dr. Lozora find in you?

8. Maria also says, “The heart has two choices: to shut down or to open up.” Discuss this statement in terms of how each of the characters in the other parts chooses to live.

9. Part One of the novel is a quest, Part Two mixes allegory with magical realism, and Part Three is contemporary realism. Which section of the book are you most drawn to and which works best for you?

10. The High Mountains of Portugal is a novel about loss, among other themes. Tomas has lost his young lover and their son; Maria Castro has lost her husband and son; Senator Peter Tovy has lost his wife. Discuss each char-acter’s response to loss. In presenting the three different -stories, what might Martel be trying to tell us about how to live with the loss of a loved one?

11. What other themes do you find in the novel—-for example, how important is faith and how important is love in each of the three parts? And which themes resonate for you personally most deeply?

12. As with Life of Pi, Martel has written a novel about how to live in the world, and about the stories we tell ourselves that enable us to do so. Discuss the stories the characters in each part tell themselves in order to cope with their loss. Do they succeed? Which character’s way of being in the world resonates most with you?

Editorial Reviews

“Pack your bags: 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, a rich mixture of sweetness that’s not cloying and tragedy that’s not melodramatic. . . . The High Mountains of Portugal attains an altitude from which we can see something quietly miraculous.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“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: the motorcar hitting obstacle after obstacle as it gradually, comically falls to pieces (as does its driver), or the ape as he swings his way across the rooftops of a Portuguese village. 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. You must change your life.”—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. . . . [Martel’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.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
 
“Martel continues his quirky romance with ideas, using three interlocking novellas to chew over religious revelation, human mortality, and interspecies communication, among other notions. . . . [He] maintains his fascination with the porous borders between homo sapiens and other species. . . . [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
 
“Written with nuanced beauty; not for nothing has Martel established himself as our premier writer of animal-based fiction.”—Toronto Star
 
“Gleefully bizarre, genuinely thrilling and entirely heartbreaking . . . While The High Mountains of Portugal is an exuberantly narrative novel, it is even more so a contemplative, philosophical one. . . . The book’s prose [reminds] us of how subtle and elegant a craftsman Martel is. . . . High Mountains resists the reader at every turn in the most pleasing way possible: it does not seek to offer you absolute truth, though it contains much wisdom; instead, it seeks to evade you, and in doing so deepens your sense of its mysteries, and the mysteries of the world we share with it.”—The Globe and Mail

“Filled with humor, sadness, love and adventure, it’s a perfect balance for those who want a feel-good book that still provides an insight into the human psyche.”—BookPage
 
“Whimsical magical realism . . . Fans of modern fables will feel right at home untangling the messages hidden within the narrative.”—Paste

“Highly imaginative . . . Martel’s narrative wizardry connects three novellas set seven decades apart in the eponymous region of Portugal. . . . Martel is in a class by himself in acknowledging the tragic vicissitudes of life while celebrating wildly ridiculous contretemps that bring levity to the mystery of existence.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“A remarkable novel.”—Maclean’s
 
“The prose is sharp, comical, and carries a deeply poignant message: though religion may be one person’s belief structure and another’s laughing stock, it is important to humanity.”—The List
 
“His depiction of loss is raw and deeply affecting—but it’s the way in which he contextualises it within formal religion that gives this book an extra dimension. Martel’s writing is enriched and amplified by the abundance and intricacy of his symbology (touching on Job, St. Peter, Doubting Thomas and the parables of Jesus) and his probing of religion’s consolations. Martel is not in the business of providing us with answers, but through its odd, fabulous, deliberately oblique stories, his new novel does ask some big questions.”—The Telegraph (four stars)
 
“[An] extravagant smorgasbord of a novel . . . If fans of [Life of Pi] have been feeling deprived, they will be happy to know [that The High Mountains of Portugal] deals in many of the same fundamental questions of life, love, family and faith. . . . At every turn Martel’s deft observations and quiet compassion for human suffering shine through.”—The Saturday Paper

From the Publisher

09/15/2015
Martel's Life of Pi was an international best seller, a Man Booker Prize winner, and the basis for an Academy Award-winning film, while the subsequent Beatrice and Virgil (a quirky risk taker) was a New York Times best seller. This new novel blends quest, ghost story, and sharp realism to explore questions of faith as it moves from the 17th century to the early and mid-20th century to today.

Library Journal