The Book of Disquiet


The Book of Disquiet is a work by the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa. Published posthumously, The Book of Disquiet is a fragmentary lifetime project, left unedited by the author, who introduced it as a "factless autobiography."
The publication was credited to Bernardo Soares, one of the author's alternate writing names, which he called semi-heteronyms, and had a preface attributed to Fernando Pessoa, another alternate writing name or orthonym.

Editions

Much studied by "Pessoan" critics, who have different interpretations regarding the book's proper organization, The Book of Disquiet was first published in Portuguese in 1982, 47 years after Pessoa's death. The book has seen publication in Spanish, German, Italian, French, English, and Dutch and 1998 ). The Book in 1991 had four English editions by different translators: Richard Zenith, Iain Watson, Alfred MacAdam and Margaret Jull Costa. The Book is a bestseller, especially in German.
The book was listed on the Norwegian Book Clubs list of the 100 best works of fiction of all time, based on the responses of 100 authors from 54 countries.

Interpretations

Teresa Sobral Cunha considers there to be two versions of The Book of Disquiet. According to Cunha, who edited the first version with Jacinto do Prado Coelho and Maria Aliete Galhoz in 1982, there are two authors of the book: Vicente Guedes in a first phase, and the aforementioned Bernardo Soares.
However, António Quadros considers the first phase of the book to belongs to Pessoa himself. The second phase, more personal and diary-like, is the one credited to Bernardo Soares.
Richard Zenith, editor of a new Portuguese edition in 1998, took the option of presenting a single volume, as in his English translation of 1991. In his introduction, he writes that "if Bernardo Soares does not measure up to the full Pessoa, neither are his diary writings the sum total of Disquietude, to which he was after all a johnny-come-lately. The Book of Disquietude was various books, with various authors, and even the word disquietude changes meaning as time passes."