Swiss · b. 1944
Pen name of Swiss philosopher Peter Bieri, whose novel Night Train to Lisbon became an international bestseller with its meditation on identity, time, and the mystery of other lives.
Pascal Mercier is the pen name of Peter Bieri, born in Bern, Switzerland in 1944. A philosopher by training, Bieri held a chair in philosophy at the Free University of Berlin. He published fiction under the Mercier pseudonym to separate his literary and academic identities.
Night Train to Lisbon (Nachtzug nach Lissabon), published in Germany in 2004 and translated into English in 2008, was Mercier’s breakthrough — a novel about a Swiss teacher named Raimund Gregorius who abandons his life on impulse to travel to Lisbon after reading a book by a Portuguese philosopher. The novel became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-two languages, and was adapted into a film in 2013 starring Jeremy Irons.
The book’s central meditation — on the unlived life, on the roads not taken, on the possibility of radical reinvention in middle age — resonated with readers across cultures. Lisbon itself, its light and its fado, becomes a character in the novel. Bieri/Mercier has published several other novels, but Night Train to Lisbon remains his defining work.
by Pascal Mercier
Philip Perlmann, a celebrated linguist, arrives at a conference in a Ligurian village to deliver a paper — but has nothing to say. As the deadline approaches, his paralysis deepens into a desperate plan that puts everything at risk.
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by Pascal Mercier
A Swiss teacher abandons his life on impulse to follow a Portuguese philosopher's book to Lisbon, where he tries to reconstruct a life lived in the resistance against Salazar's dictatorship.
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by Pascal Mercier
A man searches for his estranged daughter Lea, a violinist who has disappeared, travelling across Europe following the traces she has left — a meditation on parenthood, music, and the distances we create between those we love.
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All Pascal Mercier novels in order — from Night Train to Lisbon to Lea. The complete guide to the Swiss philosopher-novelist's work, with reading order and best starting points.
guide
New to Pascal Mercier? Night Train to Lisbon is the right starting point for almost all readers — but this guide explains what to expect and which novel suits different types of reader.
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