Author of the Month: Antonio Tabucchi
Selected by the Bookshop
Our Author of the Month for August is Italian novelist and short story writer Antonio Tabucchi.
As a young man, Tabucchi travelled widely around Europe. At a second-hand bookstall close to the Gare de Lyon he happened upon a copy of a book signed by Álvaro de Campos, one of the many pseudonyms of the Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa. It was a chance encounter that defined the rest of his life, half lived in Lisbon and half in Siena as a professor of Portuguese literature. Portugal is present in almost all of his books; his masterpiece is probably Sostiene Pereira (Pereira Maintains), a powerful description of heroic resistance, by someone nothing like a hero, to political oppression under Salazar’s dictatorship.
Recommended by David
‘Tabucchi’s tragic novel, set in Portugal during the Salazar dictatorship raises, in deceptively simple prose, profound questions around the subjects of resistance, heroism, and the peculiar nature of courage.’
From the publisher:
Translated by Frances FrenayeThe short story collection that launched Tabucchi to fame, reflecting on the uncertainties, memories, mistakes and mysteries of life Eleven short stories pivoting on life's ambiguities and the central question…
From the publisher:
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa'A funny, sad novella about how we got here from there, and how, in our youth, "our eyes saw things differently"' The TimesA private meeting, chance encounters and a mysterious tour of Lisbon haunt this…
From the publisher:
Translated by Tim Parks'A lot of people lose their way in India . . . it's a country specially made for that.' Amid the backstreets, brothels and faded hotels of Bombay, Madras and the old Portuguese port of Goa, a man searches for his lost…
From the publisher:
Translated by Elizabeth HarrisIn Stories with Pictures, Antonio Tabucchi responds to photographs, drawings, and paintings from his dual homelands of Italy and Portugal, among other European countries. The stories in this collection…
From the publisher:
Translated by Tim ParksBy Antonio Tabucchi, one of the most renowned voices in European literature and the foremost Italian writer of his generation, The Woman of Porto Pim is made up of enchanting fragments about…
From the publisher:
Translated by Anne Milano Appel, Antonio Romani, Elizabeth Harris, Frances Frenaye, Janice M. Thresher, Martha Cooley and Tim Parks“It’s difficult to say what my shadow world is made of and…
From the publisher:
Translated by Elizabeth HarrisIsabel disappeared many years ago. Tadeus Slowacki, a dead Polish writer, has returned to Lisbon from a star in order to learn the truth about her. Rumors abound: Isabel died in prison under…
Recommended by David
‘Tabucchi’s tragic novel, set in Portugal during the Salazar dictatorship raises, in deceptively simple prose, profound questions around the subjects of resistance, heroism, and the peculiar nature of courage.’
From the publisher:
Translated by Antonio Romani and Martha CooleyAs the collection’s title suggests, time’s passage is the fil rouge of these stories. All of Tabucchi’s characters struggle to find routes of escape from a…
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