The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics) |
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Fernando Pessoa
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Pages: 544 (Paperback)
ISBN: 0141183047
Pub: Penguin Classics
Pub date: 2002-05-30
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 50097
Reader Reviews:
Nothing else I've ever read comes close (0/0 people found this helpful)
This is not a great work of fiction, so look elsewhere if that's what you want. What this book is is quite simply the most honest description of the human condition I've ever read - ever page has something so profoundly true on it that it literally takes one's breath away.
Incredible.
A necessary poison (3/5 people found this helpful)
For me, to write is self-deprecating, and yet I can't quit doing it. Writing is like a drug I abhor and keep taking, the addiction I despise and depend on. There are necessary poisons, and some are extremely subtle, composed of ingredients from the soul, herbs collected from among the ruins of dreams, black poppies found next to the graves of our intentions, the long leaves of obscene trees whose branches sway on the echoing banks of the soul's infernal rivers. To write is to lose myself, yes, but everyone loses himself, because everything gets lost. I, however, lose myself without any joy - not like the river flowing into the sea for which it was secretly born, but like the puddle left on the beach by the hide tide, its stranded water never returning to the ocean but merely sinking in the sand..
Random selection page 137 / found in a box in the rain in feb 2007 haven't been able to put it down since. Every page is absorbing. Long live Pessoa.
palimpsest of the soul (15/26 people found this helpful)
When I found this book, totally by chance, this was the book I'd been waiting for. This is the book I'd take if the house was burning down. This would be the book I'd want on a desert island. This is clear eyed, unbearably honest, pragmatic existensialism. It's Dylan's "there's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all" writ large. I've known it for some years now, and I cannot imagine life without it. The most human of documents for contemporary contemplation.
The Book of Disquiet (15/22 people found this helpful)
It's unbelievable to discover that Fernando Pessoa isn't better known after you read this masterpiece of world literature.
The book reminds us of how gratuitous our pursues in life are,when we read a gem like this with the power to both unbearably shock and excite through meaningful messages that some people understand to be too pessimistic when in fact they're just too realistic,it makes you reflect on life in a big way and that's got to be a good thing unless you are a vegetable.
Madness (10/15 people found this helpful)
There's no words to talk about Pessoa's writing, its an emotional, deep experience. The tittle says it all. This is the top notch in Pessoas' writting... A book to visist in every lonly momment of your intire life... after all, you are not alone, some people know what you fell, but they can put it in words taht will be burned in your soul forever.
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Categories
Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories:
Books -> Subjects -> Biography -> Novelists, Poets & Playwrights -> Poets
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> By Period
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> World -> Portuguese
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> General
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> The Classics
Books -> Special Features -> Search Inside!
Books -> Refinements -> Language (feature_browse-bin) -> English
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Books -> Refinements -> Format (binding_browse-bin) -> Paperback
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