Yann Martel’s new novel, The High Mountains of Portugal, is an uncommon adventure story that takes us from Africa in the 1600s, through Portugal at the turn of the 20th century, to the USA of the 1980s and reminds us that it is our ability to weave remarkable stories that makes us, and keeps us, human.
The High Mountains of Portugal consists of three stories. The first takes place in 1904 and follows a determinedly rational young man named Tomas on his quest to reach the High Mountains of Portugal. In the second story, which is set in 1938, Dr Eusebio Lozora conducts an autoposy on the body of an eighty-three year old man. In the third part, set in the 1980s, Senator Peter Cohen, grieving for his broken family, is forever transformed by a visit to an Oklahoma City chimpanzee sanctuary.
Together these stories form a wondrously elliptical treatise on mortality, a parable on faith itself, a thrilling quest tale and a meditation on what makes us – and keeps us – human. Tender, heartfelt, clear-eyed and frequently hilarious, with The High Mountains of Portugal Yann Martel will once again charm the millions of fans who fell for Pi.
Despre autor
Yann Martel is the author of a short story collection, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and of four novels, Self, Beatrice & Virgil, Life of Pi (for which he was awarded the 2002 Man Booker Prize), and his latest, The High Mountains of Portugal. Life of Pi was adapted for the silver screen by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars. Martel also ran a guerilla book club with Stephen Harper, sending the former prime minister of Canada a book every two weeks for four years. The letters that accompanied the books were published as 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. Martel lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with the writer Alice Kuipers, and their four children.