The prizewinning, complete and unabridged translation--"the best
English-language version we are likely to see for a long time, if ever"
(The Guardian)--of a work of unclassifiable genius: the crowning
achievement of Portugal's modern master
Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Richard Zenith, the
author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Pessoa: A Biography
Winner of the Calouste Gulbenkian Translation Prize for Portuguese
Translation
A Penguin Classic
Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. He attributed his prolific
writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a
distinct biography, ideology, and horoscope. When he died in 1935,
Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished
writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his
posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work
that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of
Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague."
Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this
unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the
"autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves.
Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative,
captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is
one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.
"Pessoa is a genius." --André Aciman