High Mountains of Portugal (Martel)

The High Mountains of Portugal 
Yann Martel, 2016
Penguin Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812997170


Summary
In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomas discovers an old journal. It hints at the existence of an extraordinary artifact that—if he can find it—would redefine history.

Traveling in one of Europe’s earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this strange treasure.
 
Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds himself at the center of a mystery of his own and drawn into the consequences of Tomas’s quest.
 
Fifty years on, a Canadian senator takes refuge in his ancestral village in northern Portugal, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. But he arrives with an unusual companion: a chimpanzee.

And there the century-old quest will come to an unexpected conclusion.
 
The High Mountains of Portugal—part quest, part ghost story, part contemporary fable—offers a haunting exploration of great love and great loss. Filled with tenderness, humor, and endless surprise, it takes the reader on a road trip through Portugal in the last century—and through the human soul. (From the publisher.)