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 When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's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.
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) was born in Lisbon and brought up in Durban, South Africa. He returned to Lisbon in 1905. A prolific writer, ascribing his work to a variety of personas or heteronyms, Pessoa published little in his lifetime and supported himself by working as a commercial translator. Although acknowledged as an intellectual and a poet, his literary genius went largely unrecognized until after his death.
Richard Zenith (editor, translator, introducer) lives in Lisbon, where he works as a freelance writer, translator, and critic. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Pessoa: A Biography. His translations include Galician-Portuguese troubadour poetry; novels by Antonio Lobo Antunes; Pessoa's A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems; Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, which won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation; and João Cabral de Melo Neto's Education by Stone: Selected Poems, which won the Academy of American Poets’ Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.In 2012, Zenith was awarded Portugal’s Pessoa Prize.
Introduction vii Notes on the Text and Translation xxvii Acknowledgements xxxii
The Book Of Disquiet
Preface by Fernando Pessoa 3 A Factless Autobiography 9 A Disquiet Anthology 393
Appendix I: Texts Citing the Name of Vicente Guedes 465 Appendix II: Two Letters 467 Appendix III: Reflections on The Book of Disquiet from Pessoa's Writings 471 Notes 477 Table of Heteronyms 505
What People are Saying About This
From the Publisher
“This superb edition of The Book of Disquiet is . . . a masterpiece.” —John Lanchester, The Daily Telegraph
“Pessoa’s rapid prose, snatched in flight and restlessly suggestive, remains haunting, often startling. . . . There is nobody like him.” —W. S. Merwin, The New York Review of Books
“Extraordinary . . . a haunting mosaic of dreams, autobiographical vignettes, shards of literary theory and criticism and maxims.” —George Steiner, The Observer
"I plan to use this book every year in my course at Yale. Thanks for making it available." —K. David Jackson, Yale University