I think they call novels like this "epics". This one follows John Zarco Stewart from his youth well into adulthood.

Stewart the boy discovers the history of his faith at the same time as he falls in love with a mysterious girl. When his life falls apart, he relies on a new friend, a freed slave from Africa who seems to have magical powers. His father and Midnight, the freed slave, head out on a trip and only his father returns. He says Midnight was killed.

John wonders, though. He devotes his young adult life to finding out exactly what happened to Midnight, all the while getting married and having children.

I read this a few months back and, while I remember it, the details are fuzzy. I found it revealing in several ways. A historical novel about Portuguese Jews at the turn of the nineteenth century that appears to get a lot right. And a story of an interesting, obsessed man. ( )

This is a loose sequel to the author's Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, the central character being John Zarco Stewart, son of a Scottish man and a Portuguese Jewish woman in Porto at the beginning of the 19th century, and a descendant of the central character in the earlier novel. It's a novel of two halves, the first centring around John growing up in Porto, facing anti-semitism, but surrounded by his loving family and close friends. His father brings back Midnight, a Bushman from Southern Africa who is quickly accepted into the family. In the second half, Midnight, has been sold as a slave in South Carolina, in an act of tragic betrayal completely out of character for the person who commits the act, and John hunts for him all over the young United States. It is unclear until near the end whether Midnight is still alive, but he is eventually reunited with John and his family. The novel is powerfully written, with wonderful and memorable characters, with a lot to say about racism, community, the nature of free will and about love, loss and suffering, physical, mental and emotional. A marvellous read. 5/5 ( )

I really enjoyed the first The last Kabbalist of Lisbon and looked forward to reading this the second of the Zarco series of books. Jumping forward to the early nineteenth century we are introduced to a new set of characters but the affect of the anti-semitic past lives on. Our protagonist John Zarco Stewart is the son of a Scottish father and a Portuguese mother. Midnight is an African bushmen who returns with John's father to the family's Porto home.

It is probably unfair to say that I preferred the tighter focus of the first in the series, where a murder mystery held the plot together and the action covered a much shorter period of time. This is still a very good novel and an interesting story but I do feel as though the traumatic events are skipped over to some extent. Having a second narrator suddenly appear in the second part of the novel was also a bit of a jar though I did come to love her story and the way it intersects with John's.

I will definitely carry on reading Zimler's books. I do like the way he writes and the focus on a little known, to me, aspect of history - the fate of Portugal's Jews over the centuries. ( )

This author is a wonderful writer with sharp storytelling skills. Read all his books, it's worth your time! ( )

I've been waiting to read this novel as I knew it was going to be an enormous treat and I wasn't disappointed, Richard Zimler is that rare combination of a great storyteller who can write in a literary, yet, accessible style, which is emotional without being overly sentimental. John Zarco Stewart, the main protagonist, is an engaging and complex character, whose relationships with his family and friends, Daniel, Violeta and especially Midnight, the African John's father rescues from slavery, dominate his life and the story. I've been on an emotional journey with John as he crossed continents and comes to term with his own humanity and that of those whose surround him.

Zimler's prose and magical mixing of history and fiction is superb, but at the heart of the novel are his characters. Midnight, who, after a long journey, drinks so much that his belly swells to near bursting. John, whose family is destroyed by an act of betrayal

Superb and never mawkish, this novel travels from nineteenth century Porto, to London and then to the US and, the southern US sections of this novel portray the evils of slavery. But the ultimate message of this novel is that redemption that comes through love and the power of freedom. ( )