Pereira Maintains: A Testimony

Description

The much-loved masterpiece from one of the key figures of twentieth-century Italian literature In the sweltering summer of 1938, with Lisbon in the grip of Portugal's dictatorship of Ant nio Salazar, a journalist is coming to terms with the rise of fascism around him and its insidious impact on his work. Consumed by the passing of his wife and the child he never had, Pereira lives a quiet and lonely existence. One day, the young and charismatic Monteiro Rossi enters his life, changing everything. A man who once shied away from criticising Portugal's authoritarian regime finds himself unable to stay quiet any longer, resulting in his political awakening and a devastating act of rebellion.

Antonio Tabucchi (Author) Antonio Tabucchi was born in Pisa, Italy in 1943. His critically acclaimed novels and short story collections include Little Misunderstandings of No Importance, Requiem- A Hallucination and Pereira Maintains, which won the Premio Campiello, Premio Viareggio and the Aristeion Prize amongst others. Tabucchi was professor at the University of Siena, and also taught at Bard College in New York, the Ecole de Hautes Etudes and the Coll ge de France in Paris. He died in Lisbon, his adopted home, in 2012. Patrick Creagh (Translator) Patrick Creagh (1930-2012) was a British poet, translator and academic. He won the John Florio Prize in 1972 for his translation of the Selected Poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti and in 1990 for Danube by Claudio Magris and Blind Argus by Gesualdo Bufalino.

Mysterious, menacing, enthralling and mind-bending ... a masterpiece of compression -- Mohsin Hamid Pereira Maintains is small only in size. Its themes are great ones?courage, betrayal, fidelity, love, corruption; and its treatment of them is subtle, skillful, and clear. It's so clear, in fact, that you can see a very long way down, into the heart of a flawed but valiant human being, into the sickness of a nation, into the depths of political evil. It's the most impressive novel I've read for years, and one of the very few that feels truly necessary -- Philip Pullman Gripping and unexpected * The Times * Brilliant ... you'll go on thinking about the characters for weeks * Guardian * A work in the high aesthetic mode, a historical novel cast in delicately evocative prose and filled with witty references to the great figures of modern European literature. In it Italians could examine their political consciences through an artful image of another country's past. The pleasures to be had from Pereira Maintains are rich and varied, but best of all it's very enjoyable * The New York Times * Tabucchi's prose creates a deep, near-profound and sometimes heart-wrenching nostalgia and constantly evokes the pain of recognizing the speed of life's passing which everyone knows but few have the strength to accept -- Alan Cheuse * NPR * A stunningly good novel, and it goes on getting better in one's head after one has stopped reading it - it works as an experience - something that has happened to one, which is of course the proof of great writing -- Diana Athill A brilliant, profound book that also manages to be a thriller -- Roddy Doyle