Pereira Declares: A Testimony - Softcover

Tabucchi, Antonio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811213587 ISBN 13: 9780811213585

Publisher: New Directions, 1997

Synopsis

"One of the most intriguing and appealing character studies in recent European fiction, and easily the best work of Tabucchi's to have appeared in English translation."―Kirkus Reviews

Dr. Pereira is an aging, overweight journalist who has failed to notice the menacing cloud of fascism over Salazarist Portugal, until one day he meets an aspiring young writer and anti-fascist. Breaking out of his apolitical torpor, Pereira reluctantly rises to heroism.

About this title

Review:

Antonio Tabucchi has accomplished a rare feat: a socio-political novel with a decided left-wing slant that succeeds as a thriller. It is told through the voice of an aging editor at a Portuguese newspaper in 1938 during fascist rule. A murder inspires the editor out of acquiescence, and an underground movement ensues. The book rose to immediate success in Italy in 1994, a time when Italian fascism resurfaced, and Tabucchi's timely antidote to that movement was no doubt a factor in the novel's popularity. But widespread appeal of the book had as much to do with the page-turning nature of the work as its politics--a testament to Tabucchi's ability on both fronts.

About the Author:

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.”

Patrick Creagh (1930–2012) was a British poet and translator.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0811213587
• ISBN 13: 9780811213585
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 136