Requiem: A Hallucination

· Penguin UK
Ebook
96
Pages
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More

About this ebook

'A funny, sad novella about how we got here from there, and how, in our youth, "our eyes saw things differently"' The Times

A private meeting, chance encounters and a mysterious tour of Lisbon haunt this moving homage to Tabucchi's adopted city

In 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

About the author

Antonio Tabucchi (Author)
Antonio Tabucchi was born in Pisa, Italy in 1943. His critically acclaimed novels and short story collections include Little Misunderstandings of No Importance, Requiem: A Hallucination and Pereira Maintains, which won the Premio Campiello, Premio Viareggio and the Aristeion Prize amongst others. Tabucchi was professor at the University of Siena, and also taught at Bard College in New York, the Ecole de Hautes Etudes and the Collège de France in Paris. He died in Lisbon, his adopted home, in 2012.

Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)
Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers, among them novelists: Javier Marías, José Saramago and Eça de Queiroz, and poets: Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Mário de Sá-Carneiro and Ana Luísa Amaral. Her work has brought her numerous prizes, most recently, the 2018 Premio Valle-Inclán for On the Edge by Rafael Chirbes. In 2014, she was awarded an OBE for services to literature.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.