This volume brings together the best English poetry written by Pessoa across his entire writing career, from 1904 to 1935.
selected & introduced by Richard Zenith

"Readers with a particular interest in modernism will find this work indispensable."— Publishers Weekly "Pessoa's amazing personality is as beguiling and mysterious as his unique poetic output."—William Boyd A self-deprecating reflection on the sheer distance between the loftiness of feelings and the humdrumreality of life, The Book of Disquiet is a classic of existentialist literature. Fernando Pessoa , one of the founders of modernism, was born in Lisbon in 1888. Most of Pessoa's writing was not published during his lifetime: The Book of Disquiet was first published in Portugal in 1982.

For the first time―and in the best translation ever―the complete Book of Disquiet, a masterpiece beyond comparison
The Book of Disquiet is the Portuguese modernist master Fernando Pessoa’s greatest literary achievement. An “autobiography” or “diary” containing exquisite melancholy observations, aphorisms, and ruminations, this classic work grapples with all the eternal questions. Now, for the first time the texts are presented chronologically, including over 150 pages that have never appeared in any previous English edition. Most of the texts in The Book of Disquiet are written under the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper. This existential masterpiece was first published in Portuguese in 1982, forty-seven years after Pessoa’s death. A monumental literary event, this exciting, new, complete edition spans Fernando Pessoa’s entire writing life.

我經常受周於鬱悶。鬱悶是沒有思想的思想，卻需要人們竭盡全力投入思想；是沒有感覺的感覺，卻攪得正常捲入的感覺痛苦不堪；是無所期待時的期待，並且受害於對這種無所期待的深深厭惡。
鬱悶....也許，基本上是一種在我們靈魂最深處有所不滿的表現，不是給予我們並且迫使我們相信的東西。它是我們所有人都深陷其中的孩子式的孤獨，也許是人們需要一隻援手來引導出路的不安，在感情深處的黑暗道路上無所意識的茫然，更是人們無能思考的寂靜夜晚，是人們無能感覺的荒蕪野道....。─費爾南多．佩索亞〈說鬱悶〉
佩索亞的經驗吻合現代偉大詩人的傳統，他的作品將讀者引領向未知之境。充滿熱情。─帕斯(Octavio Paz)，諾貝爾文學獎得主
無可否認，佩索亞對今天葡萄牙文學能受到外國文壇注目並產生了影響有決定性的作用，且這影響與作用將繼續....沒有任何葡萄牙作家能夠企及佩索亞的那種偉大。─薩拉馬戈(Jose\’ Saramago)，諾貝爾文學獎得主
倘若佩索亞從未誕生在我們的世界，那麼波赫士恐怕就得虛構出這樣一號人物來....佩索亞的作品簡潔、優雅，卻內蘊著撼動現代人心的力量。─約翰．霍蘭德(John Hollander)，美國當代重要詩人、評論家

Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology, and horoscope. When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece,
, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague." Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith,
is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

Neste livro tão sedutor quando surpreendente, Fernando Pessoa dá voz a Bernardo Soares, ajudante de guarda-livros na cidade de Lisboa, uma personalidade literária que ora coincide com o seu criador, ora se distancia, através de fragmentos em que se cruzam temas e vozes dos múltiplos heterónimos. O Livro do Desassossego surge como diário íntimo feito de impressões, devaneios, apontamentos, entre a poesia do quotidiano mais banal e a reflexão metafísica. Qualificada pelo autor como "autobiografia de quem nunca existiu", é uma obra imprescindível para a compreensão do poeta e que oferece alguma da mais bela prosa da língua portuguesa.