Night Train to Lisbon
novel by Pascal Mercier (Peter Bieri)
Night Train to Lisbon is a philosophical novel by Swiss writer Pascal Mercier. It recounts the travels of Swiss Classics instructor Raimund Gregorius as he explores the life of Amadeu de Prado, a Portuguese doctor, during António de Oliveira Salazar's right-wing dictatorship in Portugal. Prado is a serious thinker whose active mind becomes evident in a series of his notes collected and read by Gregorius.
The book was originally published in German as Nachtzug nach Lissabon in 2004 and was first published in English in 2008. The novel became an international bestseller. Danish film director Bille August adapted the book into a 2013 film of the same name, starring Jeremy Irons as Raimund Gregorius.
The real night train from Hendaye (France) to Lisbon was stopped during the Covid pandemic after running for decades. All train connections from France to Portugal were cancelled in 2022 due to the Spanish-French Railroad War.
Characters
Raimund "Mundus" Gregorius, 57 years old, is a teacher at a Swiss gymnasium in modern-day Bern. He is an expert in ancient languages (ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew) and a man very comfortable in his routine.
The public source identifies “Night Train to Lisbon” as novel by Pascal Mercier (Peter Bieri). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Night, Train and Lisbon.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 4, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1962934. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2008, 2013 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Night Train to Lisbon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.