Winner of the 1991 Italian PEN Prize, this playful bagatelle, translated from the original Portuguese, is partly an homage to Portuguese culture, partly a mellow autobiographical fantasy.

Publishers Weekly

A private meeting, chance encounters, and a mysterious tour of Lisbon, in this brilliant homage to Fernando Pessoa

Requiem: An Hallucination

by Antonio Tabucchi

Translated from Italian by Margaret Jull Costa

In Requiem, one of his most evocative novels, Antonio Tabucchi takes the reader on a dreamlike trip to Portugal, a country to which he is deeply attached — he even chose to write the novel in Portuguese, and it had to be translated for publication in his native Italy. Requiem’s narrator has an appointment on a quay in Lisbon at twelve, and when that turns out to mean not noon but midnight, he has a long time to while away. As the day unfolds, he has many encounters: with a young junkie, a taxi driver who is not familiar with the streets, several waiters, a gypsy, a cemetery keeper, the mysterious lsabel, an accordionist — in all, almost two dozen people, both real and illusory. Finally he meets The Guest, the ghost of the long dead great poet Fernando Pessoa. Part travelogue, part autobiography, part fiction, and even a bit of a cook-book, Requiem becomes an homage to a country and its people, and a farewell to the past as the narrator lays claim to a literary forebear.

Paperback(published Nov, 01 2002)

ISBN
9780811215176
Price US
12.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
112

Clothbound(published Nov, 01 2002)

ISBN
9780811212700
Price US
15.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
112

Ebook(published Nov, 01 2002)

ISBN
9780811222495
Price US
12.95
Page Count
112
Portrait of Antonio Tabucchi

Antonio Tabucchi

Contemporary Italian writer and academic

Winner of the 1991 Italian PEN Prize, this playful bagatelle, translated from the original Portuguese, is partly an homage to Portuguese culture, partly a mellow autobiographical fantasy.

Publishers Weekly

Reading this is like having a buzzed after-dinner conversation with a mind too brilliant to get into nuts and bolts. And yet the streamlike writing, spliced by endless commas, contains a charm that shines through the monochrome.

Kirkus Reviews