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by Pascal Mercier
A tremendous international success and a huge favorite with booksellers and critics, Pascal Mercier's Night Train to Lisbon has been one of the best-selling literary European novels in recent years. Now, in Perlmann's Silence, the follow up to his triumphant North American debut, Pascal Mercier delivers a deft psychological portrait of a man striving to get his life back on track in the wake of his beloved wife's death.
Philipp Perlmann, prominent linguist and speaker at a gathering of renowned international academics in a picturesque seaside town near Genoa, is struggling to maintain his grip on reality. Derailed by grief and no longer confident of his professional standing, writing his keynote address seems like an insurmountable task, and, as the deadline approaches, Perlmann realizes that he will have nothing to present. Terror-stricken, he decides to plagiarize the work of Leskov, a Russian colleague. But when Leskov's imminent arrival is announced and threatens to expose Perlmann as a fraud, Perlmann's mounting desperation leads him to contemplate drastic measures.
An exquisite, captivating portrait of a mind slowly unraveling, Perlmann's Silence is a brilliant, textured meditation on the complex interplay between language and memory, and the depths of the human psyche.
"Even more introspective than Night Train to Lisbon, Mercier has allowed his protagonist's rumination to bury the novel's other elements." - Publishers Weekly
"For such an intensely internal novel, with most of the action occurring in Perlmann's head, there is a good deal of suspense in the latter half. It is far too wordy to keep readers on the edge of their seats, but those willing to engage with the text will be pleased they did." - Library Journal
"Perlmann's Silence is a self-reflexive, analytically philosophical thriller and action novel in the best artistic tradition... [Mercier's] immense outlay of knowledge and reflection always cuts through to a precise observation even of everyday events." - Friedmar Apel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany)
"A poignant read, and so hauntingly realistic... A colossal literary artwork." - Südkurier (Germany)
"An intelligent and considered novel... Entertaining yet erudite." - Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)
This information about Perlmann's Silence was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
A professor of philosophy, Pascal Mercier was born in 1944 in Bern, Switzerland. Perlmann's Silence is his second novel to be translated into English, following the best-selling Night Train to Lisbon.
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