Antonio Tabucchi

una testimonianza

Sostiene Pereira

While waiting for a private midnight assignation on a quay by the Tagus, the narrator spend his day, enjoying a series of chance encounters with such colorful characters as a young junky, a gypsy, a lost taxi driver, the ghost of the long dead poet Fernando Pessoa, and many others, both real and imaginary as he makes his way around Lisbon. Reprint.

A Hallucination

Requiem

The narrator describes an overwhelming encounter with the mystery, sensuality, and oppressiveness of India

Indian Nocturne

Notturno Indiano (Memoria)

nove storie

Il tempo invecchia in fretta

La testa perduta di Damasceno Monteiro

As 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 present that is hard to bear, and from places in which political events have had deeply personal ramifications for their own lives. Each of the nine stories in Time Ages in a Hurry is an imaginative inquiry into something hidden or disguised, which can be uncovered not by reason but only by feeling and intuition, by what isn't said. Disquieted and disoriented yet utterly human in their loves and fears, the characters in these vibrant and often playful stories suffer from what Tabucchi once referred to as a "corrupted relationship with history." Each protagonist must confront phantoms from the past, misguided or false beliefs, and the deepest puzzles of identity--and each in his or her own way ends up experiencing "an infinite sense of liberation, as when finally we understand something we'd known all along and didn't want to know."

Time Ages in a Hurry

A private meeting, chance encounters, and a mysterious tour of Lisbon, in this brilliant homage to Fernando Pessoa. In this enchanting and evocative novel, Antonio Tabucchi takes the reader on a dream-like trip to Portugal, a country he is deeply attached to. He spent many years there as director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon. He even wrote Requiem in Portuguese; it had to be translated into Italian for publication in his native Italy. Requiem's narrator has an appointment to meet someone on a quay by the Tagus at twelve. But, it turns out, not twelve noon, twelve midnight, so he has a long time to while away. As the day unfolds, he has many encounters—a young junky, a taxi driver who is not familiar with the streets, several waiters, a gypsy, a cemetery keeper, the mysterious Isabel, an accordionist, in all almost two dozen people both real and illusionary. Finally he meets The Guest, the ghost of the long dead great poet Fernando Pessoa. Part travelog, part autobiography, part fiction, and even a bit of a cookbook, Requiem becomes an homage to a country and its people, and a farewell to the past as the narrator lays claim to a literary forebear who, like himself, is an evasive and many-sided personality.

Requiem: A Hallucination

SI Sta Facendo Sempre Piu' Tardi

تريستانو يحتضر

A literary thriller of heroin rings and headless bodies uncovers social ills and corruption in modern day Portugal, whileas in all of Tabucchi's workblurring genre boundaries.

The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro

هذيان

A metaphysical detective story about love and existence. When Tadeus sets out to find Isabel, his former love, he soon finds himself on a metaphysical journey across the world, one that calls into question the meaning of time and existence and the power of words. Isabel disappeared many years ago. Tadeus Slowacki, a Polish writer, her former friend and lover, has come back to Lisbon to learn of her whereabouts. Rumors abound: Isabel died in prison under Salazar's regime, or perhaps wasn't arrested at all. As Tadeus interviews one old acquaintance of hers after the next, a chameleon-like portrait of a young, ideological woman emerges, ultimately bringing Tadeus on a metaphysical journey across the continent. Constructed in the form of a mandala, For Isabel is the spiraling search for an enigma, an investigation into time and existence, the power of words, and the limits of the senses. In this posthumous work Tabucchi creates an ingenious narration, tracing circles around a lost woman and the ultimate inaccessible truth.

a mandala

For Isabel

Sogni di sogni

Une Toscane secrète et ensorcelée, des villas à Forte dei Marmi, une gare de la Riviera, une Lisbonne baudelairienne... Les nouvelles de Tabucchi paraissent des aventures existentielles, des portraits de voyageurs ironiques et désespérés. Mais le trouble et le malaise s'installent. Ces histoires deviennent une réflexion auotur du hasard et du choix. Il y a une inquiétude métaphysique.

Piccoli equivoci senza importanza

nove estórias

O tempo envelhece depressa

På et langvarigt sygeleje fortæller en mand, som har kæmpet for sit lands frihed, sin dramatiske livshistorie

una vita

Tristano muore

The 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 they pose in Tabucchi's fiction: is it choice, fate, accident, or even, occasionally, a kind of magic that plays a decisive role in the protagonists' lives? Set in Paris, Lisbon, Madras and New York and blended with the author's wonderfully intelligent imagination, Tabucchi reflects on the elemental aspects of the human experience, exploring grief, uncertainty, adventure, memory and love. 'One of the most admired Italian writers of his generation' The Times

Antonio Tabucchi

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