Book Review: Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen

For a great foreign language  book to be known that well and widely acclaimed, is always dependent on the translator. Great translators do half the job of making the book great and that I say from experience. For me it is always important that the translator knows what he/she is doing with the book and Laura Watkinson knew what she was doing when she translated Tomorrow Pamplona, written beautifully by Jan van Mersbergen. I would love to thank the publisher – Meike Ziervogel for publishing this brilliant small piece of work.

Now to the book: Tomorrow Pamplona is a book about almost everything and more – it is about love, family, betrayal, and all this on a road to self-discovery. On the path to knowing what it means to be human and what does one do at the crossroads of one’s life? So the book is about a road-trip – a strange trip at that, which takes place between a professional boxer and a family man. Both want to escape their routine existence. Both want a better life, according to them. And in that elusiveness of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they discover themselves and what they really want to be.

Why is the book titled Tomorrow Pamplona? Because both of them are going to the Pamplona Bull Run, with the nagging thought that they have to eventually get back home. That is the situation with most of us – the drab and dull lives that we lead. Tomorrow Pamplona is written with a lot of heart and soul and that is why readers all over can relate to the book and what it says. For me, Tomorrow Pampona was one of those books that make you want to reassess your life – the do’s and the do nots. The want and the yearning to escape and may be that is why the book will hit a note and resonate in our hearts and minds long after the book is done with.