Richard Zenith

Richard Zenith (born February 23, 1956, Washington, D.C.) is an American-Portuguese writer and translator, winner of Pessoa's award in 2012.

He graduated from the University of Virginia, in 1979. Has lived in Colombia, Brazil, France and Portugal since 1987. He has Portuguese citizenship.

Considered by many personalities a Fernando Pessoa's expert (formerSecretary of Culture Francisco José Viegas called him "one of the greatest") has translated into English language the poet's works and has also defended Pessoa's poetry in English. Has also translated Antero de Quental, Sophia de Mello Breyner, Nuno Júdice, António Lobo Antunes, Luís de Camões among other writers.

Organized the hugely successful Fernando Pessoa, Plural como o Universo exposition, alongside Carlos Felipe Moisés, dedicated to Pessoa's life and heteronyms, in Lisbon's Gulbenkian Foundation,São Paulo's Museum of Portuguese Language and Rio de Janeiro's Centro Cultural Correios.

As a result, there can be no definitive edition of The Book of Disquiet. Written on and off over a period of more than 20 years, seemingly beginning as a book by another of Pessoa's heteronyms, Vicente Guedes, and slowly evolving into the imaginary testament of Soares, it is a dishevelled album of thoughts, sensations and imagined memories that can never be fully deciphered. Any version is bound to be a construction. In his notes on the text, Richard Zenith recognises this and suggests that readers "invent their own order or, better yet, read the work's many parts in absolutely random order". Despite this disclaimer, readers of Zenith's edition will find it supersedes all others in its delicacy of style, rigorous scholarship and sympathy for Pessoa's fractured sensibility.

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