4.5? The first half ( 2/3?) of this amazing novel was 5 stars, but I have this thing against the narrative device used in the last third that detracted slightly–I won't say what it is. In the first half as you drift around in the experience that can't be real, but is what it is, and get to know our noble narrator I was spellbound. As you get to learn of his past and the key events at the core of his life you meet some amazing characters and get to experience stunning language that captures so much so beautifully. His sassy lover I both loved and abhorred, and found very amusing. I look forward to reading it again in a few years, if I don't wake up somewhere else, hmm, where would it be? The Fairmont Pallister in Canada perhaps...?

The introduction by David Mitchell is excellent - but as always, read it after, not before, form your own impressions first. ( )

Short and intriguing novel by Dutch writer, Nooteboom. ( )

Former classics teacher Herman Mussert ("Sokrates" to his students and colleagues) wakes up in a familiar Lisbon hotel room, a room he had stayed in in the course of an extramarital affair some twenty years earlier. Which is fine, except that he's sure he went to sleep the evening before in his own apartment in Amsterdam.

It soon becomes clear that this trip — if it is a trip — has nothing to do with Mussert's current job as a hack writer of guidebooks to foreign places for ignorant Dutch tourists (obviously Nooteboom making gentle fun of his own work as a travel writer) and everything to do with that long-ago affair with biology teacher Maria, which in turn was connected to an affair between Maria's partner Arendt and Mussert's star pupil Lisa. But we have to work our way through quite a lot of Ovid, Plato, Horace, planetary science and entomology — as well as a few passing references to Pessoa — before we can start to get a clear picture of what's going on. It's all quite elegant, but Nooteboom works far more slowly and methodically than I would have thought possible in the space of a 96-page novella, so there are moments towards the middle of the book when you've seen where it's going and you feel you ought to start screaming "just get on with it!". I suppose it would be good training for reading Hermann Broch... ( )

Herman Mussert, un profesor neerlandes de lenguas muertas, se acuesta en su tranquilo apartamento de Amsterdam y amanece, al dia siguiente, en la habitacion de un hotel de Lisboa. Al despertarse, su primera sensacion no es de sorpresa, sino que siente un extrano escalofrio por la posibilidad de ser otro y por la hilarante probabilidad de estar muerto. El hombre de Amsterdam tal vez este muriendo, pero el de Lisboa contara la historia de su vida y la de las dos mujeres que fueron importantes en ella. Este sera el inicio de esta breve novela, llena de inteligencia y sabia ironia, sobre el sentido que tienen las metamorfosis y la muerte, tanto para el mundo de los clasicos grecolatinos como para el pensamiento cientifico.

The core narrative of this book isn't all that original, man looks back on life with particular emphasis on a doomed love affair, but it is written in a style that keeps it interesting. There are also hints at something otherworldly going on, teasing snippets of other stories, and a continued sense of not being too sure what's going on in the character's contemporary setting. An interesting read. ( )