Book Details

Finally! A brilliant biography that places Pessoa where he should have always belonged, with Joyce, Proust, and Musil - true giants, none of whom were Nobel laureates. -- André Aciman, author of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

Pessoa is a triumph of scholarship and verve that one cannot easily put down. -- Antonio Damasio, author of Descartes' Error

A gloriously labyrinthine biography ... Zenith's dynamic prose, deep erudition, and incisive readings of Pessoa's poetry make for a meticulous portrait of one artist's brilliant and bewildering inner world. ? Publishers Weekly

Fernando Pessoa was an enigmatic genius with protean powers whose name belongs next to Cervantes, Rabelais, Borges, and Garcia Márquez. Richard Zenith is his genius biographer who has given him fresh life. No one on earth knows more about Pessoa. With its historical sweep and novelistic execution, this biography will never be bested. -- William Giraldi, author of AMERICAN AUDACITY

When you consider the fantastically vivid details of Fernando Pessoa's curious life contained in this biography, and the energetic and elegant quality of the writing, you might wonder if this book is actually a just discovered autobiography, written by one of Pessoa's heteronyms, 'Richard Zenith.' No one, it seems, could know so much or relate it so marvelously unless they had lived inside Pessoa's head. Zenith's Pessoa is magnificent. -- Forrest Gander, author of BE WITH
Biografía del autor
Richard Zenith is an acclaimed translator and literary critic. His translations include Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet and Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, which won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. The recipient of Portugal's Pessoa Prize, Zenith lives in Lisbon.