Requiem: A Hallucination (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Tabucchi, Antonio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811215172 ISBN 13: 9780811215176

Publisher: New Directions, 2002

Synopsis

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

In this enchanting and evocative novel, Antonio Tabucchi takes the reader on a dream-like trip to Portugal, a country he is deeply attached to. He spent many years there as director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon. He even wrote Requiem in Portuguese; it had to be translated into Italian for publication in his native Italy.

Requiem's narrator has an appointment to meet someone on a quay by the Tagus at twelve. But, it turns out, not twelve noon, twelve midnight, so he has a long time to while away. As the day unfolds, he has many encounters―a young junky, a taxi driver who is not familiar with the streets, several waiters, a gypsy, a cemetery keeper, the mysterious Isabel, an accordionist, in all almost two dozen people both real and illusionary. Finally he meets The Guest, the ghost of the long dead great poet Fernando Pessoa. Part travelog, part autobiography, part fiction, and even a bit of a cookbook, 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 who, like himself, is an evasive and many-sided personality.

About this title

About the Authors

Antonio Tabucchi was born in Pisa in 1943 and died in Lisbon, his adopted home, in 2012. Over the course of his career he won France’s Medicis Prize for Indian Nocturne, the Italian PEN Prize for Requiem, and the Aristeion Prize for Pereira Maintains. A staunch critic of the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, he once said that “democracy isn’t a state of perfection, it has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.”

Margaret Jull Costa, who has translated Javier Marías and José Saramago, lives in England.

Reviews

In this wonderful, enchanting tribute to the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, the narrator travels to Lisbon for a midnight meeting at the Tagus quay with the distinguished (and deceased) poet, whom he idolizes. During the course of the day, he meets a young drug addict who asks for money, a taxi driver who does not know his way, a gypsy, a cemetery worker, and others, real and imaginary, who add to the dreamlike atmosphere of his quest. Along the way, the narrator drinks a newly created cocktail at the Museum of Ancient Art and has a few interesting meals, the recipes to which are included in an appendix. Aptly subtitled, this book brilliantly creates a story that, like a delicious cocktail, most readers will finish in one gulp and will return to savor. Ten other novels by Italian author Tabucchi have been translated into English (e.g., The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro). Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.
Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial P.L., OH
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811215172
• ISBN 13: 9780811215176
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112