Here is where we meet
Short stories and novellas , 2005
Vintage
It is not always easy to tell, in the work of John Berger, where fiction meets autobiography—or, for that matter, essay and meditation. His latest book takes the form of encounters the author has with characters from the past—Jorge Luis Borges, Rosa Luxemburg, mentors, tutors, and lovers—in cities across Europe, from Lisbon and Madrid to Geneva and Kraków. One by one, the apparitions turn up, artfully and reverentially sketched, before vanishing again with just the whisper of a message left behind. In Lisbon, city of trams and azulejos, Berger encounters the spirit of his long-departed mother and reflects, “Perhaps Lisbon is a special stopover for the dead, perhaps here the dead show themselves off more than in any other city.”