Requiem : A Hallucination

Author(s): Tabucchi, Antonio,
Binding: Paperback,
Date of Publication: 01/07/2021,
Pagination: 96 pages,
Series: Penguin Modern Classics,
Imprint: Penguin Classics,
Published By: Penguin Books Ltd,
Book Classification: Portugal,
Dimensions: 129 x 198 x 10
ISBN13/EAN/SKU: 9780241519318

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'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 moving homage to Tabucchi's adopted cityIn the city of Lisbon, Requiem's narrator has an appointment to meet someone on a quay by the Tagus at twelve. Misunderstanding twelve to mean noon as opposed to midnight, he is left to wait. As the day unfolds he has many unexpected encounters - with a young drug addict, a disorientated taxi driver, a cemetery keeper, the mysterious Isabel and the ghost of the late great poet Fernando Pessoa - each meeting travelling between the real and illusionary. Part travelogue, part autobiography, part fiction, 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.

'Tabucchi is a master of illusion and allusion, and this is a literary puzzle that teases, amuses and provokes' Sunday Telegraph