The Night Train To Lisbon

Contributed by The Rev. Ross Downes on January 18 2022.

The content of this post may not necessarily reflect the policies, theologies or opinions of St Peter's Anglican Church, Palmerston North.

The Night Train to Lisbon

I have been reading a novel by Pascal Mercier; “Night Train to Lisbon”. It is a fascinating and indeed engaging novel about a classics professor who, following an encounter with young woman and then an encounter with a book in a second-hand book store, simply walks out of his classics class and catches the Night Train, from Geneva to Lisbon. It is the book he has brought that drives him; a diary of the thoughts of an enigmatic Portuguese Aristocrat, writing in the time of the Salazar dictatorship. In these diary notes come philosophical musings that prompt memories of Marcus Aurelius. It is the Portuguese Aristocrat he wants to know more about... Read more...