The Book of Disquiet - A Selection

The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa’s unfinished and fragmentary prose work, has ironically become the most famous monograph of one of the greatest, most translated, published, and widely read poets of the 20th century. The Book presents itself as an epic of the Negative, through the lens of an anti-hero, the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper in Lisbon, who in his spare time wanders the city and writes seemingly disconnected reflections, which are nonetheless united by the experiences of the decaying city and by two key ideas running through them: the dissolution of the bourgeois universe and the sublimation of existential unreality through the reality of writing. This essential anthology of The Book of Disquiet gathers a preface written by Pessoa himself and 49 representative fragments of the work, grouped into seven themes — “Modern Life,” “The Day Dream,” “The City,” “Sensation,” “Identity,” “Work,” and “The Philosophy of Composition” — conceived as a map to navigate the author’s poetic universe. The selected fragments provide an intimate encounter with its essential passages and allow the reader to discover why this posthumous work has become one of Fernando Pessoa’s most important literary legacies and a treasure of contemporary world literature. With selection and introduction by Diego Giménez, one of the most renowned specialists in The Book of Disquiet, the anthology is enriched by a contribution from Marta Nunes, one of the most talented Portuguese illustrators of the new generation, whose original creations add a layer of visual reinterpretation in harmony with the timeless sensitivity of Pessoa’s writing.