In this extraordinary book, the putative 'factless autobiography' of an accountant named Bernardo Soares, Fernando Pessoa explores and dismantles the nature of memory, identity, time and narrative, creating one of the greatest - but also the strangest - modernist texts. An assembly of sometimes-linked fragments, The Book of Disquiet is a mesmerising, haunting 'novel' without parallel in any other culture.
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NEC's view
The Book of Disquiet is one of the most lyrical works we have ever read. Fragmentary and dreamlike, it unfolds less as a novel than as a collection of reflections, impressions, and inner weather.
What we love most is the language itself—flowing, melancholic, and precise, it makes even the smallest thoughts feel luminous. It carries you along, turning everyday details into meditations on solitude, longing, and the strangeness of being alive.
We found ourselves reading slowly, often pausing after a passage just to sit with its rhythm. This is a text you can return to at different points in life and always find new profundity waiting there.
