Lost 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 Tomas 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.

Martel was born in Salamanca, Spain, the son of Nicole Perron and Emile Martel. His parents were French-Canadian.[5] His father was posted as a diplomat for the Canadian government at the time of his birth. He was raised in Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and Canada. As an adolescent he attended high school at Trinity College School, a boarding school in Port Hope, Ontario.
As an adult, Martel has spent time in Iran, Turkey and India. After studying philosophy at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Martel spent 13 months in India visiting mosques, churches, temples and zoos, and spent two years reading religious texts and castaway stories. He now lives in Saskatoon, Canada. [6] His first published fictional work, Seven Stories, appeared in 1993.
In 2001, he published the novel Life of Pi, his fourth book, which was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2002.[4] Life of Pi was later chosen for the 2003 edition of CBC Radio's Canada Reads competition, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee. In addition, its French translation, Histoire de Pi, was included in the French version of the competition, Le combat des livres, in 2004, championed by singer Louise Forestier.