That's exactly what 57-year-old Raimund Gregorius finds in a secondhand bookshop. That little book, along with a young Portuguese woman about to jump off a bridge, cause this set-in-his-ways professor of dead languages to walk out of the school where he has taught for 30 years, out of his rigid life of habits in Bern, and get on a train to Lisbon to find out everything he can about the little book's Portuguese author, Amadeu de Prado.
The novel expertly tells two stories at the same time with two very different, very endearing heroes. One is Gregorius, the old academic suffering from dizzy spells, who boldly decides to live the part of his life he's never dared. From being a stuffy old stickler the faculty call Papyrus, he is slowly humanized and changed in Lisbon by piecing together the troubled saga of the little book's author.
That's Amadeu de Prado, the other hero, a brilliant bad boy whose fiery graduation address scandalizes the Church, an honest young man who falls in love with the woman adored by his best friend. Amadeu is an obedient son who takes up medicine to please his pain-ridden, hunchbacked father. He becomes a saintly doctor who saves the life of the dictator's cruelest henchman and becomes hated by the Resistance fighters he loves. Both tales are studded with dozens of great scenes and emotional payoffs.
It's a story about putting together the pieces of a story. Readers learn about the characters in their tragic, romantic youth as legendary figures, then encounter them as old people, when the drama is long over. The present-day action of the novel is built upon interviews with the geriatric survivors. You've never read a novel with this many 80-year-old characters!
To top it off, hefty servings of Amadeu's translated writings pepper the tale in meaty philosophical chunks. Go ahead and buy this one--believe me, you'll want to read it more than once.--Nick DiMartino