" Night Train to Lisbon, which first appeared in German in 2004 and went on to sell 2 million copies throughout Europe in many different translations, is not a typical best-seller.(.) Mercier’s wording is so dense and overwrought, and Barbara Harshav’s translation so ham-handed, that unpacking each sentence is like decoding a cryptic crossword in hieroglyphs." - Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review "(F)antastical, long-winded and dull (.) The book was a huge hit in Europe, where the reading public has greater patience for turgid (Mercier might prefer to call it "bombastic") introspection.They make the novel particularly ponderous." - Katharine Hibbert, New Statesman Even so, this cannot explain the absence of narrative tension, or Mercier’s grandiose style (.).
"The novel, as mesmerizing and dreamlike as a Wong Kar-wai film, with characters as strange and alienated as any of the filmmaker’s, is in fact preoccupied with translation, with all that can be lost or gained in the process.Night Train to Lisbon was made into a film in 2013, directed by Bille August, and starring Jeremy Irons and Mélanie LaurentĪ- : appealing if drawn out exploration of self and others.General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.