Booknews
The first English translation (by Alfred Mac Adam) of selections from the major prose work of Pessoa (1888-1935), the most important Portuguese man of letters of the 20th century, and often identified, along with Rilke and Yeats, as one of the greatest European poets of the century. Composed (under the heteronym of Bernardo Soares) of reveries and everyday impressions from the last two decades of Pessoa's life, The book of disquiet partakes of the genres of the intimate diary, prose poetry, and the descriptive narrative. Of inestimable importance. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Kirkus Reviews
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.
From the Publisher
I can’t tell which of the three English-language editions of The Book of Disquiet I’ve read . . . most accurately conveys the style and spirit of Pessoa, but judging the English alone, Zenith’s translation is most compelling. . . . I want Pessoa to be as great as the version Zenith presents.” —Chris Power, New Statesman
“A Modernist touchstone . . . no one has explored alternative selves with Pessoa’s mixture of determination and abandon . . . In a time which celebrates fame, success, stupidity, convenience and noise, here is the perfect antidote, a hymn of praise to obscurity, failure, intelligence, difficulty, and silence.” —The Daily Telegraph
“His prose masterpiece . . . Richard Zenith has done an heroic job in producing the best English-language version we are likely to see for a long time, if ever.” —The Guardian
“The Book of Disquiet was left in a trunk which might never have been opened. The gods must be thanked that it was. I love this strange work of fiction and I love the inventive, hard-drinking, modest man who wrote it in obscurity.” —Independent
“Fascinating, even gripping stuff . . . a strangely addictive pleasure.” —Sunday Times
“Must rank as the supreme assault on authorship in modern European literature . . . readers of Zenith’s edition will find it supersedes all others in its delicacy of style, rigorous scholarship and sympathy for Pessoa’s fractured sensibility . . . the self-revelation of a disoriented and half-disintegrated soul that is all the more compelling because the author himself is an invention . . . Long before postmodernism became an academic industry, Pessoa lived deconstruction.” —New Statesman
“Extraordinary . . . a haunting mosaic of dreams, autobiographical vignettes, shards of literary theory and criticism and maxims.” —The Observer
“Pessoa’s rapid prose, snatched in flight and restlessly suggestive, remains haunting, often startling, like the touch of a vibrating wire, elusive and persistent like the poetry . . . there is nobody like him.” —The New York Review of Books
“This superb edition of The Book of Disquiet is . . . a masterpiece.” —The Daily Telegraph
“I plan to use this book every year in my course at Yale. Thanks for making it available.” —K. David Jackson, Yale University
