The Book of Disquiet

Pessoa's most famous work depicts a vast interior landscape laced with daily minutiae and aphoristic brilliance

The eternal mystique of Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) stems largely from his practice of writing under "heteronyms." More than just nom de plumes, Pessoa's heteronyms came with distinct biographies, careers, life spans, even horoscopes. In The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa came as close as he ever would to autobiography. Left on disordered scraps of paper in a trunk, the fragments that make up The Book of Disquiet record in disjunct entries a vast interior landscape and daily minutiae, making for a discontinuous, gently unhinged monologue in daybook form.