'Author of paradoxes as clear as water and, as water, dizzying: ... mysterious man who does not cultivate mystery, mysterious as the mid-day moon, taciturn phantom of the Portuguese mid-day - who is Pessoa?' asks Octavio Paz.
This collection of the work of Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) answers that question. It is an essential introduction to the work of one of the most original European poets of the twentieth century. It includes translations of a broad selection of his poems and his extraordinary prose, and some of his original English writings. A major introductory essay by Octavio Paz, a critical anthology, two posthumous 'interviews' and illustrations from the Pessoa archive are also included, to reveal the world of Pessoa in all its richness.

`Pessoa's amazing personality is as beguiling and mysterious as his unique poetic output. We cannot learn too much about him.' - William Boyd.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was the greatest Portuguese poet of the last century, and is one of Europe's greatest poets too. When he died he left a trunk full of poetry, philosophical writings, criticism and other texts. There are 25,426 items in the archive, including those that constitute The Book of Disquietude (Carcanet, 1997). Carcanet was the first English-language publisher of Fernando Pessoa in 1971. In 1997 Carcanet published Richard Zenith's translation of The Book of Disquietude. Eugenio Lisboa was born in Mozambique in 1930 and educated there and in Portugal. An eminent poet, essayist and literary critic, his publications include standard works on Jose Regio and Jorge de Sena, and critical studies of modernism in Portugal. L.C. Taylor was the director of the Gulbenkian Foundation and a founder of the Carcanet Press / Gulbenkian Foundation series Aspects of Portugal, for which he edited Rose Macaulay's They Went to Portugal, Too (1990). He co-edited A Centenary Pessoa with Eugenio Lisboa for the Fyfield series. Keith Bosley was born in Buckinghamshire in 1937 and read French at Reading, Paris and Caen. He is the author of six collections of poems. Over twenty works of translation include Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic (1977), Mallarmé: The Poems (1977), From the Theorems of Master Jean de La Ceppède (1983) and the Kalevala (1989).