This collection of fragmented, meandering observations and introspections cannot be described as a novel it is more an insomniac's journal, written in the persona of an accounting clerk in Lisbon, Bernardo Soares. During his lifetime, his only fame was as a minor literary figure who co-founded the short-lived publication Orpheu after his death in 1935, 25,000 documents – essays, plays, poems, even horoscopes – were found in his attic and the academic scramble to assemble them began. He employed more than 70 different characters, imaginary identities that read one another's writing and wrote one another's obituaries. A postmodernist poet posthumously adopted as part of the Portuguese canon, Fernando Pessoa (below) adopted a series of voices – or "heteronyms" – in which to write.
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