| Requiem: A Hallucination Contributor(s): Tabucchi, Antonio (Author), Costa, Margaret Jull (Translator) |
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ISBN: 081121270X ISBN-13: 9780811212700 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation OUR PRICE: $14.36 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: May 1994 Annotation: Antonio Tabucchi's novel Requiem is set in Lisbon on a torrid July day. The unnamed narrator - clearly a persona of Tabucchi himself - awaits a midnight appointment on a quay of the Tagus. His time is filled with a succession of encounters with residents of the Portuguese capital, and with late friends and relations. Part travelog, part autobiography, part fiction, Requiem at once becomes a homage to a country and a people and a farewell to the past; requiescat in pace. In all this, the narrator himself remains shadowy, walking in a dream atmosphere. The midnight appointment approaches. The narrator meets at last with another unnamed writer, now long dead, though the evidence points to the great poet Fernando Pessoa. Requiem thus ends as an act of succession, the narrator's claim to a literary forebear who, like himself, is of evasive and manifold personalities. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 93046672 |
| Physical Information: 0.63" H x 5.63" W x 8.32" (0.54 lbs) 112 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Tabucchi, Antonio: - 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."Costa, Margaret Jull: - MARGARET JULL COSTA is a three-time winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. For New Directions, she has translated works by Rafael Chirbes, Javier Marías, Fernando Pessoa, Eça de Queirós, and Enrique Vila-Matas. |