The High Mountains of Portugal

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

Lost in Portugal.
Lost to grief.
With nothing but a chimpanzee.

A man thrown backwards by heartbreak goes in search of an artefact that could unsettle history. A woman carries her husband to a doctor in a suitcase. A Canadian senator begins a new life, in a new country, in the company of a chimp called Odo. From these stories of journeying, of loss and faith, Yann Martel makes a novel unlike any other: moving, profound and magical.

A New York Times Bestseller
An Australian Independent Bookseller Bestseller
#1 on The Globe & Mail’s Bestseller List
#1 on Toronto Star’s Bestseller List
#1 on Maclean’s Bestseller List
#1 on National Post’s Bestseller List
#1 on McNally Robinson’s Bestseller List
An ABA Indie Bestseller

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

Lost in Portugal.
Lost to grief.
With nothing but a chimpanzee.

A man thrown backwards by heartbreak goes in search of an artefact that could unsettle history. A woman carries her husband to a doctor in a suitcase. A Canadian senator begins a new life, in a new country, in the company of a chimp called Odo. From these stories of journeying, of loss and faith, Yann Martel makes a novel unlike any other: moving, profound and magical.

A New York Times Bestseller
An Australian Independent Bookseller Bestseller
#1 on The Globe & Mail’s Bestseller List
#1 on Toronto Star’s Bestseller List
#1 on Maclean’s Bestseller List
#1 on National Post’s Bestseller List
#1 on McNally Robinson’s Bestseller List
An ABA Indie Bestseller

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.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

Lost in Portugal. Lost to grief. With nothing but a chimpanzee.

The extraordinary new novel from the author of Life of Pi.

In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the location of an extraordinary artefact that – if it exists – would redefine history. Travelling in one of Europe’s earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this treasure. Some thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist finds himself at the centre of a murder mystery.

Fifty years on, a Canadian senator takes refuge in northern Portugal, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. But he comes to his ancestral village with an unusual companion: a chimpanzee.

The High Mountains of Portugal takes the reader on a road trip through Portugal in the last century – and through the human soul.