Product Description

The first English-language translation of Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa's only novel. It takes the form of the autobiography of Bernardo Soares, a Lisbon clerk.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #741020 in Books
• Published on: 1991-09-15
• Original language: Portuguese
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 262 pages

Review
The private meditations of one of modern Portugal's most celebrated poets and critics, set down pseudonymously in the form of a journal spanning some 20 years. Pessoa (1888-1935) is not well known outside of Portugal. A bookkeeper and journalist, he lived quietly in Lisbon and published much of his poetry under assumed names. (The putative author of The Book of Disquiet is "Bernardo Soares, Assistant Bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon.") Although he was raised in South Africa and educated in English, Pessoa held that "my country is the Portuguese language"; this work shows the truth of that claim. It records with palpable clarity the inner life of an immensely gifted and unbelievably self-contained writer who moves through the daily world of offices and trams and restaurants with no apparent aim besides the description and re-creation of his thoughts. We are given a picture of extraordinary tedium and solitude, but the "fatigue" that the narrator complains of so frequently does not prevent him from breathing life into the most commonplace events and discerning the true wonder of familiar things. The cut of a woman's dress, for example, glimpsed in passing aboard a streetcar, becomes a reminder of human society: of the factory that produced it, the hands that sewed it, the inventories that recorded it, and the threads that wove it. A thunderstorm watched through an office window carries all the force and terror of an apocalypse. Throughout, the focus is constantly sharpened by the author's narrative restraint, which commands attention, and by his depth of vision, which rewards it. Profound and moving: a work of immense, quiet power. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

just don't bother!
I have no idea what anyone sees in this book. The author can be forgiven as he neither completed it, ordered it or edited it, all this being done after his death. It's not a novel, nor a near novel, just a series of random, mainly ethereal observations. It's a long time since i gave up reading a book, but after 200 pages i really felt it wasn't worth going on.

one book you will never get tired of!!!!
never read this book like a novel coz its not!! read 2-3 pages if not 2-3 paragraph and most importantly random pages, it is one of the most exciting factless autobiography i have read, its a literary bible for the book lover what bible is for the Christians.

Strictly for poetry lovers
To call this a diary is something of an exaggeration, it is rather a collection of fragments attributed to a single character, that has been published in at least 2 different sequences with no-one any the wiser.

There is no plot, no action, no progression of any kind. The narrator has no particular attractions and there is no character development. Soares is chiefly characterised by a level of passivity in the face of the world that makes Hamlet look like 007.

There are beautiful passages and some very interesting thoughts scattered through this, but the fact that it is impossible to remember what one read 2 pages ago let alone 20 pages back makes it necessary to mark these to find them. I can't help wondering if this was merely intended as a source book for his poetry rather than a publishable work.

The rave reviews of the newspaper critics puzzle me exceedingly - did they actually read right through it? Or did they give up assuming that the difficulty of the text combined with the beauty of some early passages was sufficient proof of quality.

This can only be read the way poems are read - in small doses and without reference to preceding pieces - and it will probably more satisfying to read his poems instead.