The Book of Disquiet

The Book of Disquiet (Livro do Desassossego: Composto por Bernardo Soares, ajudante de guarda-livros na cidade de Lisboa), published posthumously, is a work by Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935), signed under the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares. With a preface by Fernando Pessoa, orthonym, the book is a fragmentary lifetime project, left unedited by the author, who introduced it as a "factless autobiography."

In Lisbon there are a few restaurants or eating houses located above decent-looking taverns, places with the heavy, domestic look of restaurants in towns far from any rail line. These second-story eateries, usually empty except on Sundays, frequently contain curious types whose faces are not interesting but who constitute a series of digressions from life.

Still studied by the Pessoan critics, who have different interpretations about the way the book should be organized, it was first published in Portuguese in 1982, 47 years after Pessoa's death; the author died also at 47, in 1935. The book has seen publication in Spanish (1984), German (1985), Italian (1986), French (1988), and English (1991). The Book in 1991 had four English editions by different translators: Richard Zenith (editor and translator), Iain Watson, Alfred Mac Adam and Margaret Jull Costa. The Book is a bestseller, especially in German (16 editions, from different translators and publishers).

The book was listed on the Norwegian Book Clubs list of the 100 best works of fiction of all time, based on the responses of 100 authors from 54 countries.

Teresa Sobral Cunha considers that there are two Books Of Disquiet. According to the expert that organized, along with Jacinto do Prado Coelho and Maria Aliete Galhoz, the first edition edited in 1982, there are two authors of this book: Vicente Guedes in a first phase (in the 10's and the 20's) and the aforementioned Bernardo Soares (late 20's and the 30's).

However, António Quadros considers that the first phase of the book belongs to Pessoa. The second phase, more personal and diary-like, is the one belonging to Bernardo Soares.

Richard Zenith, editor of a new Portuguese edition, in 1998, took the option of a single volume, as in his first translation, back in 1991. In his introduction, he wrote that «If Bernardo Soares does not measure up to the full Pessoa, neither are his diary writings the sum total of Disquietude, to which he was after all a johnny-comelately. The Book of Disquietude was various books (yet ultimately one book), with various authors (yet ultimately one author), and even the word disquietude changes meaning as time passes».

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