Product Description
In Portugal, an aging, lonely journalist escapes facing the ominous cloud of Fascism by translating French stories for a weekly newspaper. It is his reluctant awakening that gives the novel its delightful, heroic power. Published to wide critical acclaim in the U.S., this is a delightful political novel by Italy's premier contemporary author.Amazon.com Review
Antonio Tabucchi has accomplished a rare feat: a socio-politicalnovel with a decided left-wing slant that succeeds as a thriller. It is toldthrough the voice of an aging editor at a Portuguese newspaper in 1938 duringfascist rule. A murder inspires the editor out of acquiescence, and anunderground movement ensues. The book rose to immediate success in Italy in1994, a time when Italian fascism resurfaced, and Tabucchi's timely antidoteto that movement was no doubt a factor in the novel's popularity. Butwidespread appeal of the book had as much to do with the page-turning natureof the work as its politics--a testament to Tabucchi's ability on bothfronts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Between Politics and Poetry: Free Speech in the Workplace Diminished by Repressive Government
Fear of speaking out at work is a manifestation of larger political and social forces than simply a dysfunctional administration at one's place of work. If we assess our working life as part of a system we will begin to see where repression comes from and we can begin to develop a philosophical, ethical and political framework to overcome fear. Certain kinds of governments unleash and empower the petty dictator within some bureaucrats. Without a larger world view than our cubicle in our office in our building we can easily be made to feel threatened, marginalized or isolated when we speak up for what we deem is right action. And there is nothing good about being threatened, marginalized or isolated. Through reading and literature we gain the best understanding of how a government sets the tone for repression that eventually becomes fear to speak at work.

Pereira, a journalist in Lisbon (1938), slowly realizes that by acceding to government censors in the choice of books he reviews that his culture is being compromised:

"Well then, said the editor-in-chief, I really didn't expect this latest thing. What latest thing?, asked Pereira, That panegyric on France, said the editor-in-chief, has caused a lot of offence in high places. What panegyric on France? asked Pereira totally bewildered. Come now Pereira ! exclaimed the editor-in-chief, you published a story by Alphonse Daudet about the Franco-Prussian War which ended with the phrase, " `Vive la France!". [p. 109].

I used _Pereira Declares_ as in a speech and article, WORKPLACE SPEECH IN LIBRARIES,_Progressive Librarian_ no31 6-16 Summ 2008.
--
It adds context when reading _Pereira Declares_ [__Sostiene Pereira] to know the writers and literature. Also, good to read on.

Luigi Pirandello(1867-1936).
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)
Federico García Lorca. La casa de Bernarda Alba (1936). [He was executed, shot by Falange militia on August 19, 1936], (1898-1936).
Georges Bernanos.Journal d'un curé de campagne; Grand Prix du Roman (1936). (1888-1948).
François Mauriac "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life." (1885 - 1970).
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935).
Guy de Maupassant. Bel Ami .(1885). Le Horla. (1887). (1850-1893).
T.E. Lawrence. (1888-1935).
Thomas Mann. (1875-1955.)
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926).
Honoré de Balzac. Honorine (1843). (1799-1850).
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. (1844-1900).
Giambattista Vico. (1668-1774).
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. (1770-1831).
Karl Marx, 1818-1883.

Alphonse Daudet. Le petit Chose (1868). Contes du Lundi(1873).'La Derniere Classe.' L'Arlésienne (1872).(1840-1897).
Aquilino Gomes Ribeiro.[He was involved in the opposition to António de Oliveira Salazar and the Estado Novo, whose government tried to censor or ban several of his books.] (1885-1963).
Bernardo Marques. (1898-1962).
Théodule Ribot. (1839-1916).
Pierre Marie Félix Janet.(1859-1947).
Jacques Maritain. 1882-1973.
Vladimir Mayakovsky. (1893-1930.)
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein. (1898-1948).

Made into the last film withMarcello Mastroianni.

A brave man's awakening against all fascisms
Antonio Tabucchi (1943) is the most European and international of modern Italian writers, comparable only to Umberto Eco, with whom he has an ongoing literary discussion on the intellectual's role in society. Eco is convinced that the artist/intellectual should only organize knowledge, while Tabucchi stands up for the right of the artist, in presence of preoccupying political evolutions, to ring the warning bell when necessary. This ringing of the bell is only one of the many keys to use when reading Tabucchi's 1994 novel "Pereira declares".
This lyrical short book, probably inspired by the life of a true Portuguese journalist, narrates in an unusual testimonial third person style (maybe a police officer?), an apparently insignificant (?) episode that happened in Lisbon in the summer of 1938. Pereira, the editor of the cultural page of an afternoon newspaper, meets and befriends a young anti-regime political activist Monteiro Rossi that is willing to do anything (also write beforehand necrologies of famous authors) for a little bit of money. Monteiro Rossi, naturally gets into trouble dragging with him the at first reluctant and then convinced Pereira. The book's plot, that is the true driving force because of its fast and at the same time deep pace, is only the excuse to face the real topic. This is Pereira, his personality, his times, freedom of press, the author's love of Lisbon (where he lives for half of the year, being a professor of Portuguese literature in an Italian University), Portuguese history during the last years under the Salazar regimen, Europe's plight when dealing with fascism then and now.
All these themes are precisely the reason that determined the selection of this book of Antonio Tabucchi, among his many other beautiful works, as the intellectual flag of political opposition in 1994, against the press tycoon Silvio Berlusconi's entry in the political arena.
However, even if this made the book famous twelve years ago, and history has gone overrunning its the apparent actuality, as all works of art this novel is still enchanting to read and its subtler merits constantly emerge.
First of all we must consider modern Italian literature, greatly unknown or not translated for the English speaking public, that has most of the characteristics of postmodernism. Italy is a country culturally and sociologically removed (that considers itself as backwards) from the rest of Europe and the U.S. Italian literature reflects this belief and Italian authors think that all has been already written, so they privilege citations, irony, satire, mingling of literary types, "pastiches" and they reach their best satisfaction when "found out" or "discovered" by their cult readers that appreciate their citation abilities. "Pereira declares" is full of these citations, beginning with the authors Monteiro Rossi writes obituaries for (in Italian these are called "crocodiles", like crocodile tears) like for example Garcia Lorca, who at the time of the novel hadn't yet been killed, but would be soon, up to the French novelists of the Nineteenth Century Pereira loves and translates picking out their present meaning. The short story of Daudet's "Contes du lundì" on the Franco-Prussian War is the emblem of political frontiers and intestinal war in Europe and retains its actuality for Pereira at the moment he is speaking (1938), for the Author (1944), and for us reading now in 2006. All the Authors Tabucchi cites, Balzac, Bernanos (now long forgotten for many), Maupassant have some eternally true intuitions, but we must know them well to fully appreciate what Tabucchi wants to convey. The same must be said for Pessoa (1888-1935), the great Portuguese poet, studied by Tabucchi, which introduced the great season of poetical "avanguard" and sang of the all Portuguese sentiment of "Saudade" a yearning or nostalgia made up of suffering and sweatness, a longing for the past and the future together, a category of the spirit "that is at the same time a form of suicide" (Tabucchi). Pereira longs for and constantly relives his love for his wife and his youth in Coimbra and finds them again in Monteiro Rossi and Marta, his girlfriend.
Tabucchi, like in other novels of his, utilizes a journalist, police like approach and with this literary technique he remembers Leonardo Sciascia and Frederich Durrenmatt, that have explored this literary stile before him with great results.
If you can find it watch the 1995 movie "Sostiene Pereira" directed by Roberto Faenza with Marcello Mastroianni as Pereira and Daniel Auteuil as Doctor Cardoso, that faithfully follows the book and helps to visualize Tabucchi's poetry.
Read this book to have an idea of the best of modern Italian literature and to taste some of the greater European problems of yesterday and today.

Pereira, an eternal character in fiction
Tabucchi has created a monumental work: how conscious are we of our actions and our motives, how do we experience our everyday life and what awareness do we have of it versus the inner sense of ourselves.It measures up to Anna Karenina.
Tabucchi deserves the Nobel prize.

From an Italian author with a uniquelyeffective style
This tale, told as though it were a documented testimony resulting from some unidentified investigative process, is a complete and believable characterisation of a very dull but gentle man, Dr. Pereira. While an editor of a no-hum local newspaper in 1938 Lisbon, he struggles to maintain his invisible and intentionally unexpressive life by ignoring the political repression and censorship mounting around him. He takes pride in the fact that his paper is apolitical.

Through the subtlest of facts and inferences, all easily grasped, this book enables readers to feel that they're discovering Pereira all by themselves, with almost no assistance from the unseen narrator or author. It's as though Tabucchi has the map but you're the driver. This style is delicate and unobtusive yet it delivers a sense of realness and a rich atmosphere unexpected in a story of just 136 pages. You feel the breeze rolling in off the Atlantic and along those streets. To the same degree, something so trivial as the presence of sugar in lemonade informs us exactly of the level of frustration Pereira experiences vis-a-vis his own new and atypical responses to people and events. He can't comprehend a rationale for his behaviour but he's painfully aware of the danger he's posing to the safe life he's made for himself.

This is Tabucchi's most famous book. I was introduced to it by a friend in northern Italy who's read every book he's written,including his later 2001 book, "Si Sta Facendo Sempre piu Tardi" ("It's Getting Later all the Time"). This hasn't yet been released in North America but Amazon lists it as orderable.

A great book in a first-rate translation
Pereira is a reluctant hero of our time: an inadequate, faintly absurd manwho tries to live a decent personal life in a political setting that allows little room for such illusions. Fascist Portugal in 1938, like some other "civilized" nations closer to our own day, is poisoned by false certainties and the corrupt exercise of vindictive power. Only proclamations of pious conformity are allowed. Pereira, himself a pious and harmless man, finds himself gradually forced, through circumstances beyond his control, to assume the role of a full human being, and to stand up, however briefly, for what is right. Pereira's moral resurrection is handled with great delicacy by Tabucchi. The English translation is another plus: Patrick Creagh is one of the finest translators working today, and here does full justice to Tabucchi's restrained and thoughtful prose. The cumulative effect is remarkable. If they read English over in Stockholm, this book could put its author in contention for the Nobel Prize. ... Read more

Product Description
"An enjoyable, well-crafted little book."—The Complete ReviewTranslated from the Italian, this winner of the Prix Medicis Etrangerfor 1987 is an enigmatic novel set in modern India. Roux, the narrator,is in pursuit of a mysterious friend named Xavier. His search, whichdevelops into a quest, takes him from town to town across thesubcontinent. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Gem
A narrator's novella with precise images, active imagination, and a subtly suggested plot should enthrall any reader. Tabucchi is probably Italy's best living writer. This tale, made up of dreamy yet clear episodes, in a seach of ambiguous meaning brings out all the narrator's ambivalencies. An understanding of India emerges and most important portraits of men and one woman.

"To light and shadow"
This Medicis Prize('89) winning book is an exploration of thefrontiers of identity within very ancient India. It may all be a dream as the "Author's Note" which precedes this 100 page text describes the narrative as an "insomnia" and a "search for a shadow". You can make of that what you like but those evocative sentences only partially set the tone for Tabucchi's book is a playful series of encounters that his unnamed narrator-protaganist has with fellow travelers and interesting Indian characters along the way to finding a missing friend.The several encounters read like enquiries, but pleasant ones, and ones with philosophical as well as humorous overtones(in one encounter identity is compared to a suitcase). Some of the sequences are so strange you think it all must be a dream as when a female thief breaks into the narrators hotel room only to be invited to stay the night. Other meetings are full of a very engaging and speculation rich kind of conversation as in the meeting with the Hugo and Pessoa quoting eastern intellectual. If it is all a dream it is a very literate one. The last meeting takes place in the old Portugese port of Goa and there the narrator meets a lovely charming stranger to share a dinner with as he waits for a chance to spy a glimpse of his old searched for friend. But as they eat the narrator relates his "story' in a way that makes one suspect there was no one and nothing to search for after all(modern fiction indeed it is). But you are left after putting this book down with a feeling of having had several intriguing conversations and having met a lovely woman. Not at all a bad feeling. An insomnia well spent.

This book hooked me on Tabucchi
The first time I read this book was when I also read for the first timeCarrere's The Mustache - a fortunate accident as they both pose a questionof identity.Tabucchi sets his tale in India in the form of an unnamed mantrying to find a man, perhaps his brother, who has been missing for about ayear.His search takes him to a brothel in Bombay, to a Bombay hospital,to the Theosophical Society in Madras, to the library of a religious orderin Goa ...Along the way he encounters a dying Jain, a deformedsaddhu/fortune teller, a former Philadelphia mailman, a photographer ofhuman misery ...An interesting story, well written, with an unexpectedending.A movella well worth your time.

a magic trip
The traveller is someoene who is looking for a friend who got lost in India, but we realize very soon that he's actually looking for himself. A trip full of incredible encounters with people who are the soul of India,and places described in such a way that we could almost smell, hear and seewhat the author felt while he was there. ... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A wispy love letter to Lisbon with an encounter with the ghost of Pessoa
Antonio Tabucchi (born in 1943 in Pisa)was Italian cultural consul in Lisbon, lives there half the year, and teaches Portuguese Literature at the University of Siena the other half of the year. I greatly admire his 1994 novel "Periera Declares" won the Aristeion European Literature Prize.

Tabucchi wrote the novella "Requiem," subtitled "A Hallucination," in Portuguese. It involves a reverie-filled day by an aging writer not unlike Tabucchi that involves visiting a graveyard, a bordello, a crumbling mansion on the Caiscais coast, and culminates in a meal with the ghost of a poet who can only be Fernando Pessoa, the towering figure of 20th-century literature whom Tabucchi has translated and written about (with his Portuguese wife).

The text of "Requiem" occupies only 90 pages (plus three pages providing detail on the many Portuguese dishes mentioned in the text). I don't regret the small amount of time I spent reading the book, though "Periera Declares," which I can heartily recommend for characterization, plotting, and subject matter.

Vaque and unimaginative, in a shallow way
"Requiem" is Antonio Tabucchi's praise for Lisbon. It describes the journey of one man through the Portugalise city, where he meets some people, dead and alive, in the otherwise deserted city.

The peculiarity of the character is the fact that he has lost his superego, with the consequences of his id, the subconscious fludding his contious mind, hence makim him live in a sort of dreamworld. And from that world come the dead of his past.

The book is slightly semi-artistic, and it's message is left to be speculated about. And even if the basic premise of the story is intriquing, it fails to measure up to the potential it contains.

A short, nice read, wich doesn't offer anything to think about.

Life is a dream
The lightness of Tabucchi's Requiem makes it a very easy book to like. It helps to be at least a little bit familiar with the Portugese poet and author Fernando Pessoa who is the figure Tabucchi is to meet. The novella is very short (107 pages but lots of chapters so lots of white space and big print) and really more on the amusing than philosophical side. The little conversations read like little asides but soon one realizes that is what the book is, a little aside. There are some amusing references made about modern literature that could very well apply to the book we are reading and also a very interesting reference to a story written that later came true(a kind of mini meditation on how fact and fiction mimic each other or follow the same laws, the same could be said for life and dreams) but the book purposely stays on the surface of things. Food is the real center of the book. That is the most substantial and sustaining ritual at the heart of life, at least that apsect of life that is most real it seems to Tabucchi. So the books pages pass, each meeting a chance for conversations and most of the conversations are just small talk. Kind of like life. It is clear the events are all dreamed and so Tabucchi is free to talk to both friends and relations living and dead. But they say the same kinds of things to each other in the dream world that they did in real life. And the dream world is little different than the real world. That is the charm of the book. Life is a dream, so eat.

Life is a dream
The lightness of Tabucchi's Requiem makes it a very easy book to like. It helps to be at least a little bit familiar with the Portugese poet and author Fernando Pessoa who is the figure Tabucchi is to meet. The novella is very short (107 pages but lots of chapters so lots of white space and big print) and really more on the amusing than philosophical side. The little conversations read like little asides but soon one realizes that is what the book is, a little aside. There are some amusing references made about modern literature that could very well apply to the book we are reading and also a very interesting reference to a story written that later came true(a kind of mini meditation on how fact and fiction mimic each other or follow the same laws, the same could be said for life and dreams) but the book purposely stays on the surface of things. Food is the real center of the book. That is the most substantial and sustaining ritual at the heart of life, at least that apsect of life that is most real it seems to Tabucchi. So the books pages pass, each meeting a chance for conversations and most of the conversations are just small talk. Kind of like life. It is clear the events are all dreamed and so Tabucchi is free to talk to both friends and relations living and dead. But they say the same kinds of things to each other in the dream world that they did in real life. And the dream world is little different than the real world. That is the charm of the book. Life is a dream, so eat.

One way to quiet one's ghosts
Requiem: A Hallucination is a book in which the narrator is obviously a persona of the author.The action takes place within a single day - theaction being a dream, an hallucination of the narrator.The narrator isintroduced as he is annoyed that the person he is to meet has missed theirappointment at 12 noon - only to realize that 12 to a ghost is more likelymidnight.The person he is to meet is not explicitly identified but ismost likely the poet Pessoa.

The narrative then covers the time until themidnight meeting.In this time the narrator meets a drug addict in thepark, a seller of lottery tickets, a gypsy who reads his fortune, a deadfriend, a madame of an unsavory hotel, his deceased father, a barkeeper, apainter of details from the Temptation of St. Anthony, a lighthousekeeper's wife who is caretaker for a house in which he once lived, a formerlover, a seller of stories, and finally the intended guest.Along the wayone gathers recipes, literary history, a bit of philosophy ...

I highlyrecommend this book; it is an excellent text to first encounter Tabucchi. ... Read more

Product Description
From Italy, an epistolary novel like no other, full of Tabucchi's special "enchantment, which trans-figures even as it captivates" (TLS).

In It's Getting Later All the Time, an epistolary novel with a twist, Antonio Tabucchi—"internationally acclaimed as the most original voice in the new generation of Italian writers" (The Harvard Book Review)—revitalizes an illustrious tradition, only to break all its rules. Seventeen men write seventeen strangely beautiful letters—tender or rancorous—lonely monologues which move in circles, each describing an affair, and each desperate for a reply which may never come. The letters plunge the reader into an electric, timeless no-man's-land of "this past that is always somewhere, hanging in shreds." And at last, collecting all their one-sided, remorseful adventures into a single polyphonic novel, an 18th letter startlingly answers the men's pleas: a woman's voice, distant, implacable, yet full of sympathy. It's Getting Later All the Time captures destinies which, though so varied in appearance, are at rock bottom all the same: broken. This is an anti-Proustian novel—time lost is lost forever: it is impossible to get back to the past no matter how it haunts the present. As Tabucchi remarked, "Broken time is a dimension you find lots of men living in...an ambiguous, impossible situation, because they are faced with a kind of remorse, a choice they never made." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"Speaking, and especially writing, are always ways of coming to terms with the lack of meaning in life."
Lovers of experimental literary fiction will celebrate this newly translated novel by "the most respected name in Italian fiction of the past twenty years." Antonio Tabucchi, winner of numerous European prizes and translated into eighteen languages, stretches the limits of narrative as he traces his characters' searches for meaning, especially through their relationships with other people. Episodes from his own life provide inspiration and narrative context for those timely moments which reveal his characters' emotional crises.

Seventeen different men write letters to the women who have dominated their lives, and as each man reminisces about his life and love, he reveals the circumstances of the inevitable breakup and how the broken relationship has haunted him for years ever after. The eighteenth letter is written by a woman, a grand finale addressed to the men severally, which offers advice and puts their experiences into a wider context.

The speakers live throughout Europe--on a Greek island, along a river in Italy, and in Paris (with a side trip to Brazil), and one speaker has "not made" a journey to Samarkand (Uzbekistan). They include a theatre director, a dying man, an architect, a faculty member, a Jewish harpist who escaped the war, a character actor, a composer, and a widower with two children. Each wrestles with a love story from the past and its continuing effect on his present.

Impressionistic and poetic, this novel is not a narrative in the traditional sense. Abstract ideas and images, sometimes dream-like and sometimes nightmarish, reveal life's suffering. More a series of memoirs or first-person stories than a novel, the book examines our differing concepts of time and our different reactions to the past at various points in our lives. Most of the speakers are involved in creative arts, and the novel also celebrates their creativity and the uniqueness of their individual creations. Sometimes humorous, especially in the episode involving a 1980's interpretation of Hamlet, the novel is also self-conscious and philosophical. Free form prose takes the reader into a world of circular stories and repeating motifs.

European in its literary focus, this novel considers serious questions of identity, and it does not hesitate to flout literary convention to accomplish the emotional effects for which the author obviously strives. Providing a detailed Postscript, in which he explains the events from his own life which inspired the episodes in this book, the author also provides an intimate view of the creation and development of this work of literary fiction. An experimental "novel" for which a star rating is not appropriate.n Mary Whipple
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

First work of Tabucchi to be translated into English
Letter from Casablanca is a collection of unrelated short stories.WhileTabucchi shows the same skill and control that he shows in his novellas,I'll admit to a preference for the latter.However, the title story ofthis collection is not to be missed - it purports to be a letter written toa sister whom the letter's author has not contacted for 18 years.They hadbeen split - the boy to Argentina, the girl to "up North" after afamily catastrophe.

"Voices" is a tale told from theperspective of an individual who mans a "crisis clinic line"."Theatre" is set in colonial Africa where an Englishmanentertains a young Portuguese colonial functionary with weeklytheater.

If you enjoy short stories or have read Tabucchi's novellas, youshould read this collection - and everyone should read the title story,"Saturday Afternoon" is a family tale, again of loss andseparation, of "hiding your head under the sand".The boy in afamily that has suffered the lost of the father, hides himself in his Latinlessons.

"Heavenly Bliss" is of an artistic young womanaccepting a job as a personal secretary who serves more as a companion toan older woman with an interest in all things Japanese. ... Read more

Product Description
Antonio Tabucchi, one of Italy's most original prose stylists, gives us two ingenious worksof fiction in lucid translations by Nancy J. Peters, copublisher of City Lights Books. This is thesecond volume in our new series of contemporary literature in translation from Italy, City Lights/Italian Voices. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Name-dropping is no substitute for creativity
I was very disappointed by the Tabucchi's Dreams.The author attempts to recreate the dreams of twenty or so canonical figures from Western civilization.I felt that author made no effort to penetrate the psyche of these great human beings.The dreams were recreated by an obviously shallow reading of bio-sketches.If you want to know what I mean, select one of the characters you know very well and read his dream.I am familiar with Debussy's music and have no qualms about suggesting that Debussy's dream is a mediocre parody of his "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun".

The same problems persist in the Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa.This short work offended me more than the Dreams.I adore Pessoa and his poetry.It was heartbreaking to see all his heteronyms turn into colorless characters that stroll through this story.I consider Ricardo Reis to be the heteronym closest to Pessoa's personality.Unfortunately Reis comes back to the dying Pessoa to tell him that he didn't leave Portugal.Am I missing something here?? In short, any average reader of Pessoa can write a better book on the confrontations of the heteronyms with their creator.

Another masterpiece from Antonio Tabucchi
This book is a collection of short stories of dreams of various major artists or influences on the arts - from Daedalus to Freud.It is a book that makes me wish to be more broadly educated in European literature - forwhen I was familiar with the biography and works of the individual, thematching of the imagined dream to the individual was more clear.Forexample, the dream of Federico Garcia Lorca picks up on his work regardingdeepsong.Lorca is on stage singing a Gypsy song "a song about duelsand orange groses, passion and death" ...A small black dog leads himtowards his death as a traitor ... The dream is a wonderful mix of clarityand chaotic jumps, as are real dreams.

Tabucchi writes in his normal tautprose - with wonderful lines to mull over: "Life is indecipherable,answered Pessoa.Never ask and never believe.Everything ishidden."

But this book, unlike his other works requires significantknowledge of his reader.If you've never read Tabucchi, I would suggestthat you begin with any of his other books.If you are a Tabucchi fan,this new book will not disappoint you. ... Read more

Product Description
A literary thriller of heroin rings and headless bodies uncovers social ills and corruption in modern day Portugal, while—as in all of Tabucchi's work—blurring genre boundaries.

Antonio Tabucchi, Italy's premier writer and a best-selling author throughout Europe, draws together Manolo the gypsy, Firmino, a young tabloid journalist with a weakness for Lukács and Vittorini, and Don Fernando, an overweight lawyer with a professed resemblance to the actor Charles Laughton, to solve a murder that leads far up and down Portugal's social ladder.

As the investigation leads deeper into Portugal's power structure, the novel defies expectations, departing from the formulaic twists of a suspense story to consider the moral weight of power and its abuse. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Extremely Well-Written and Surprisingly Light
Like many of Tabucchi's other works, this book is set in Portugal, and this time most of the action takes place in the more provincial northern city of Oporto.The novel opens there as Manolo the gypsy finds a headless body.

The Lisbon journalist, Firmino, working for the tabloid O Acontecimento, and a man of literary ambitions of his own, is sent to Oporto to follow the unfolding story.This book follows his investigation as he discovers the identity of the dead man, why the crime was committed and the perpetrators.Tabucchi, never one to write a simple and straightforward story, doesn't begin to do so here.Although the reader can learn the identity of the dead man without even opening the book and the crime is solved with very little effort, there are undercurrents that wend their way through every page of this novel.

Two people assist Firmino in his quest:Dona Rosa, the woman who runs the pension where Firmino stays in Oporto, and Don Fernando, a lawyer who is better known as Attorney Loton because of his strong resemblance to the actor Charles Laughton.Both Dona Rosa and Fernando seem a little too sure of themselves, a little too well-connected, to be genuine, but Tabucchi manages to pull this off without resorting to cliches.

The crime is based on an actual event that occurred in 1966, during the time of the Salazar dictatorship, although the novel is set in present-day Portugal.However, the fact that much has remained unchanged in Portugal is a point not to be missed.The crime, itself, involves drug smuggling and police corruption and brutality by the Guardia National.

The characters seem to be, for the most part, outsiders, from Firmino, himself, to the luckless Damasceno Monteiro, to the gypsies, to the transvestite who actually witnessed the killing.

Firmino, who files one story after the other regarding this crime, is finally handed all the evidence he needs on a silver platter...right along with the head of Damasceno Monteiro.It is at this moment that Firmino realizes that he is a pawn and that Don Fernando, huffing and puffing, is leading him on.

As is usually the case, the police do not make certain relevant facts public, but these are just the facts the public needs to know in order to ensure that justice prevail.It is up to poor Firmino to reveal these bits of hidden information, to make sure the whole affair is not swept under the rug and neatly forgotten.Tabucchi does not provide us with an altogether satisfactory ending, but he does hold open the small possibility that justice will be done.

This is a thoughtful novel.The characters are well-drawn, the descriptions of Oporto are engaging and the prose is smooth and even.The book is also rich in detail.Firmino's driving ambition is to write about Elio Vittorini and his influence on the Portuguese novel and he speaks of finding Lukacs's methods useful to his studies.Don Fenando speaks extensively of being greatly influenced by the legal scholar Hans Kelsen, even having gone so far as to follow him to Berkeley and Geneva as a student."His theories about the Grundnorm had become my obsession," Don Fernando says.

This is heady stuff, but Tabucchi handles it well.Don Fernando often speaks of others, including Freud, Mitscherlich and Jean Amery as well.Fernando, though, finally chooses to leave theory behind and opt for action instead, defending those who had suffered unnecessarily in courts of law.Don Fernando's choice of action-over-words has a profound influence on Firmino.

For a book about such a heinous crime, The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro is surprisingly gentle.Thoughtful and extremely well-written, it echoes lightly long after one has finished the last page.

Interesting politically aware mystery
I am a die-hard Antonio Tabucchi fan and had ordered The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro prior to its release by the publisher.Read my review in this context.

The novel begins with a gypsy finding a corpse ... theinitial scene is interesting in terms of the socio-political critique ofthe Portugese/Spanish treatment of the gypsies.Like Tabucchi's previouslypublished Fernando Pessoa, the main character is a journalist; the storymoves in a direction different than that implied by the opening scene. However, the expectation of the exploration of socio-political nature ismet.

While I prefer Tabucchi's work outside of the "thriller"genre of the last two novels, his writing (and its translation) are so welldone that the genre is unimportant - in any genre, he writes stories thatmake you think as well as making you loath to set the book down.

If youlike literary thrillers, The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro iscertainly in the same category as Canone Inverso, Class Trip, and The Nameof a Bullfighter all of which are in some way masterful. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Who is the dead young man?
This book is one of the more enigmatic of Tabucchi's.Spino, who worksfor a morgue, is a man unwilling to make a commitment to marriage whileenjoying a long-term relationship, a man unwilling to finish his medicaldegree and "make something of himself".On evening, a youngunidentified body "Carlo Nobodi" is brought to the morgue - thevictim of a police raid / shootout.Spino becomes obsessed withidentifying the person and tracesCarlo back to his school days withouttruly succeeding at putting a person or family behind the name.

Thestory is part detective story - tracing an identity through apriest thatbefriended Carlo, through the jacket he wore that had been given to hisfather (uncle?), through the small boarding school in which Carlo resided,and through Spino's connections in the seamy underside of the port. Memory, dreams, death and commitment all wind their way through theplot.

This is another fine book by Tabucchi which forces one to considerconnections, life, death and identity.I recommend it.

Tabucchi's works are settled on the margins that are not a
Tabucchi's works are settled on the margins that are not a limit, but instead carry within possibilities, they allow characters, events and situations to turn into their opposites in accordance to the dim andcreative field of his fantasy. During an ingenuous first reading, his booksare infinitely enjoyable, but yet much more joyful for those who acceptsharing Tabucchi's position on the margins of literature and philosophy ina fruitful and co-creative dialogue with the author.

Tabucchi's works are settled on the margins that are not a
Tabucchi's works are settled on the margins that are not a limit, but instead carry within possibilities, they allow characters, events and situations to turn into their opposites in accordance to the dim andcreative field of his fantasy. During an ingenuous first reading, his booksare infinitely enjoyable, but yet much more joyful for those who acceptsdharing Tabucchi's position on the margins of literature and philosophy ina fruitful and co-creative dialogue with the author. ... Read more

Product Description
Sostiene Pereira, Antonio Tabucchi, Italian Edition, Feltrinelli, 2006, Paperback ... Read more

Product Description
Postmodern Ethics offers a new perspective on debates surrounding the role of the intellectual in Italian society, and provides an original reading of two important Italian contemporary writers, Leonardo Sciascia and Antonio Tabucchi. It examines the ways in which the two writers use literature to engage with their socio-political environment in a climate informed by the doubts and scepticism of postmodernism, after traditional forms of impegno had been abandoned. Postmodern Ethics explores ways in which Tabucchi and Sciascia further their engagement through embracing the very factors which problematized traditional committed writing, such as the absence of fixed truths, the inability of language to fully communicate ideas and intertextuality. Postmodern Ethics provides an innovative new reading of Tabucchi s works. It challenges the standard view in critical literature that his writing may be divided intoengagedtexts which dialogue with society andpostmoderntexts which focus on literary interiority, suggesting instead that socio-political engagement underpins all of his works. It also offers a new lens on Sciascia s writing, unpacking why Sciascia, unlike his contemporaries, is able to maintain a belief in literature as a means of dialoguing with society. Postmodern Ethics explores the ways in which Tabucchi and Sciascia approach issues of terrorism, justice, the anti-mafia movement, immigration and the value of reading in connected yet distinct ways, suggesting that a close genealogy may be drawn between these two key intellectual figures. ... Read more

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Tristano, un hombre qu eha combatido por la libertad de su pais, llama a la cabecera de su cama a otro escritor que en otro tiempo se inspiro en el para escribir una novela. Durante su agonia, atenazado por la gangrena y las jaquecas, al albur de los efectos de la morfina, Tristano recompone un pasado inabarcable y bosqueja el fresco de cerca de sesenta anos de la historia de Italia, con sus tragedias y sus simulacros, hasta la irrupcion del ultimo avatar tiranico, el de la estupidez televisiva. ... Read more

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Con claridad expositiva y rigor metodológico. Daniel Alejandro Capano propone en este libro un viaje a través de la obra de Antonio Tabucchi. Las sagaces observaciones del ensayista y la novedosa y abarcadora propuesta que presenta recorren la totalidad de la producción narrativa del autor de Sostiene Pereira. A través de variados enfoques y de un trabajo de deconstrucción se ingresa en la obra del escritor italiano y se revelan su fecunda capacidad creadora. su habilidad como narrador y su refinado estilo. así como también. por medio del análisis exhaustivo de los textos. se despliega su diversidad temática y se muestra la profunda vocación humanista del escritor.Tabucchi ha llegado a la madurez creativa y ocupa en la actualidad un lugar destacado en el panorama literario italiano y mundial. Desde ese espacio se proyecta al futuro con un vigor inusual. pues en cada nueva publicación sorprende con su voz narrativa inagotable y deslumbra por la destreza de su arte. Sus textos recuperan el valor de la lectura y evidencian la intención implícita del goce del lector. El errático juego de la imaginación. La poética de Antonio Tabucchi resulta. pues. un libro fundacional en nuestro medio. de amplio interés y de lectura indispensable para los estudiosos del autor y de su obra. ... Read more