High Mountains of Portugal - Yann Martel, Canongate Books

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERLost in Portugal. Lost to grief. With nothing but a chimpanzee.The extraordinary new novel from the author of Life of Pi. In Lisbon in 1904, a young man named Tomás discovers an old journal. It hints at the location of an extraordinary artefact that - if it exists - would redefine history. Travelling in one of Europe's earliest automobiles, he sets out in search of this treasure. Some thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist finds himself at the centre of a murder mystery. Fifty years on, a Canadian senator takes refuge in northern Portugal, grieving the loss of his beloved wife. But he comes to his ancestral village with an unusual companion: a chimpanzee. The High Mountains of Portugal takes the reader on a road trip through Portugal in the last century - and through the human soul.