This Medicis Prize('89) winning book is an exploration of the frontiers of identity within very ancient India. It may all be a dream as the "Author's Note" which precedes this 100 page text describes the narrative as an "insomnia" and a "search for a shadow". You can make of that what you like but those evocative sentences only partially set the tone for Tabucchi's book is a playful series of encounters that his unnamed narrator-protaganist has with fellow travelers and interesting Indian characters along the way to finding a missing friend. The several encounters read like enquiries, but pleasant ones, and ones with philosophical as well as humorous overtones(in one encounter identity is compared to a suitcase). Some of the sequences are so strange you think it all must be a dream as when a female thief breaks into the narrators hotel room only to be invited to stay the night. Other meetings are full of a very engaging and speculation rich kind of conversation as in the meeting with the Hugo and Pessoa quoting eastern intellectual. If it is all a dream it is a very literate one. The last meeting takes place in the old Portugese port of Goa and there the narrator meets a lovely charming stranger to share a dinner with as he waits for a chance to spy a glimpse of his old searched for friend. But as they eat the narrator relates his "story' in a way that makes one suspect there was no one and nothing to search for after all(modern fiction indeed it is). But you are left after putting this book down with a feeling of having had several intriguing conversations and having met a lovely woman. Not at all a bad feeling. An insomnia well spent.

The first time I read this book was when I also read for the first time Carrere's The Mustache - a fortunate accident as they both pose a question of identity. Tabucchi sets his tale in India in the form of an unnamed man trying to find a man, perhaps his brother, who has been missing for about a year. His search takes him to a brothel in Bombay, to a Bombay hospital, to the Theosophical Society in Madras, to the library of a religious order in Goa ... Along the way he encounters a dying Jain, a deformed saddhu/fortune teller, a former Philadelphia mailman, a photographer of human misery ... An interesting story, well written, with an unexpected ending. A movella well worth your time.

The traveller is someoene who is looking for a friend who got lost in India, but we realize very soon that he's actually looking for himself. A trip full of incredible encounters with people who are the soul of India, and places described in such a way that we could almost smell, hear and see what the author felt while he was there.

This book is one of the more enigmatic of Tabucchi's. Spino, who works for a morgue, is a man unwilling to make a commitment to marriage while enjoying a long-term relationship, a man unwilling to finish his medical degree and "make something of himself". On evening, a young unidentified body "Carlo Nobodi" is brought to the morgue - the victim of a police raid / shootout. Spino becomes obsessed with identifying the person and traces Carlo back to his school days without truly succeeding at putting a person or family behind the name.

The story is part detective story - tracing an identity through a priest that befriended Carlo, through the jacket he wore that had been given to his father (uncle?), through the small boarding school in which Carlo resided, and through Spino's connections in the seamy underside of the port. Memory, dreams, death and commitment all wind their way through the plot.

This is another fine book by Tabucchi which forces one to consider connections, life, death and identity. I recommend it.

Tabucchi's works are settled on the margins that are not a limit, but instead carry within possibilities, they allow characters, events and situations to turn into their opposites in accordance to the dim and creative field of his fantasy. During an ingenuous first reading, his books are infinitely enjoyable, but yet much more joyful for those who accept sdharing Tabucchi's position on the margins of literature and philosophy in a fruitful and co-creative dialogue with the author.

This small little book is a clever idea. The book is a wonderful photographic biography of the great Portuguese poet from the 20th century - Fernando Pessoa. Even if one does not know anything about Pessoa, this book provides a wonderful pictorial view of what his life was. Here, one will find pictures on almost every aspect of the poet's life, from his birth certificate, to family pictures, including pictures of letters, his typewriter, and terrific pictures of Lisbon in the early part of the 20th century.

Antonio Tabucchi introduction gives us a clear and well written explanation of Fernando Pessoa's importance for the literature of the 20th century. I highly recommend this book. This is an excellent introduction to Pessoa.

Pereira Declares is OK, an entertaining lecture.
The story is about a newspaper editor, Pereira, who is suddenly having moral issues. The plot develops in Portugal, in a time period where fascism rules and the media is strictly supervised by the government. Pereira is an easy going man, he leaves alone, his wife passed away and he doesn't have any kids. His life is a boring routine, but he doesn't want to get in any trouble. The something happens, he meets this kid who wants to work with him at the news paper. Well, he starts thinking of this young man as his own son (he sees himself reflected), but the boy's writings are far too controversial for the time. And, he finds out that this kid may be involved with government opposition forces in Spain...and the story goes on (I don't want to spoil anything, if there's really anything to spoil). Hmm...the plot reminds me a little bit of a script for a Hollywood B movie, the main character is doing fine, but something external happens so he has to make choices....and he makes the right ones! (cliche)...and then the end (In fact it was portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni in a film). Absolutely no surprises, this novel lacks emotion.

Well, but it's a fine story. The narrative style is OK, the plot is OK. An OK novel. Don't get your expectations too high, but if this book bounces into your hands, you may read and not regret it

One more thing, Tabucchi could really have avoided repeating the phrase "Pereira Declares" 10,000 times throughout his book, it seemed something that a teenager writer would have done, it got to my nerves.

Antonio Tabucch's short (136 pgs.) and magnificant 1994 novel Declares Pereira is a devistating study of the coming of totalitarianism. Set in Portugal in 1938, Tabucchi's tale, originally written in Italian, is the story of an overweight, fading, and ill newspaper reporter now editing the culture page of a mediocre Lisbon newspaper who befriends, and then helps, a young writer with unacceptable political views. Pereira steadfastly tries to avoid any political involvement whatsoever, but the nature of the coming Nazi state makes neutrality impossible. Pereira must choose, and this choice involves either betrayal of his young comrade or his own political suicide. I will not disclose how or why Pereira exercises his option. Read this book and find out!

Pereira Declares is set in Lisbon as Portugal is sliding into an oppressive state. Pereira is the editor of a cultural page where his work reflects not what he would wish to write but rather what is acceptable to write. He life revolves around his dead wife, food and his dream of writing a book. After seeing a piece by Monteiro Rossi, a recent university graduate in philsophy, he hires Rossi to write a column for the cultural page. Rossi is as politically aware and active as Pereira is blinded and inactive. The story is of the growing relationship between the two men and the choices Pereira is forced to make as he starts participating in life.

While the plot is predictable in the sense that people are predictable, the writing and wit of the novel not only is entertaining but also forces the reader to consider their own stance regarding death, religion and politics.

This novel is well worth your time.

"Requiem" is Antonio Tabucchi's praise for Lisbon. It describes the journey of one man through the Portugalise city, where he meets some people, dead and alive, in the otherwise deserted city.

The peculiarity of the character is the fact that he has lost his superego, with the consequences of his id, the subconscious fludding his contious mind, hence makim him live in a sort of dreamworld. And from that world come the dead of his past.

The book is slightly semi-artistic, and it's message is left to be speculated about. And even if the basic premise of the story is intriquing, it fails to measure up to the potential it contains.

A short, nice read, wich doesn't offer anything to think about.

The lightness of Tabucchi's Requiem makes it a very easy book to like. It helps to be at least a little bit familiar with the Portugese poet and author Fernando Pessoa who is the figure Tabucchi is to meet. The novella is very short (107 pages but lots of chapters so lots of white space and big print) and really more on the amusing than philosophical side. The little conversations read like little asides but soon one realizes that is what the book is, a little aside. There are some amusing references made about modern literature that could very well apply to the book we are reading and also a very interesting reference to a story written that later came true(a kind of mini meditation on how fact and fiction mimic each other or follow the same laws, the same could be said for life and dreams) but the book purposely stays on the surface of things. Food is the real center of the book. That is the most substantial and sustaining ritual at the heart of life, at least that apsect of life that is most real it seems to Tabucchi. So the books pages pass, each meeting a chance for conversations and most of the conversations are just small talk. Kind of like life. It is clear the events are all dreamed and so Tabucchi is free to talk to both friends and relations living and dead. But they say the same kinds of things to each other in the dream world that they did in real life. And the dream world is little different than the real world. That is the charm of the book. Life is a dream, so eat.

Requiem: A Hallucination is a book in which the narrator is obviously a persona of the author. The action takes place within a single day - the action being a dream, an hallucination of the narrator. The narrator is introduced as he is annoyed that the person he is to meet has missed their appointment at 12 noon - only to realize that 12 to a ghost is more likely midnight. The person he is to meet is not explicitly identified but is most likely the poet Pessoa.

The narrative then covers the time until the midnight meeting. In this time the narrator meets a drug addict in the park, a seller of lottery tickets, a gypsy who reads his fortune, a dead friend, a madame of an unsavory hotel, his deceased father, a barkeeper, a painter of details from the Temptation of St. Anthony, a lighthouse keeper's wife who is caretaker for a house in which he once lived, a former lover, a seller of stories, and finally the intended guest. Along the way one gathers recipes, literary history, a bit of philosophy ...

I highly recommend this book; it is an excellent text to first encounter Tabucchi.

Tabucchi writes both novellas and short story collections. He's a minimalist but one who chooses his few words well. His writing seems slight at first and his plots almost nonexistent but there is a momentum that builds as you get to know him from story to story, his deceptively simple words and stories are like queries as to what the nature of life might be. This collection is just eleven short(10 pgs each) attempts to show how life might occur . The first story ,"Little Misunderstandings..."is about a group of friends. Each fall into roles chosen for them by the accidents of circumstance and all seem helpless to be able to participate in their lives except as observers who find themselves mildly amusing. "Waiting for Winter" is a story Tabucchi himself says he wishes Henry James would have written. As Tabucchi tells it we see the widow of a great man of letters going through the motions of mourning. But there is at stories end a twist. James would have filled in the story with sufficient nuance and detail to give the reader a clear picture of a particular psychology and at least give us as readers a chance at understanding a characters motive for doing a certain thing. Tabucchi only gives you the barest amont of information. The last event of the story therefore remains an inexplicable one, the story remains an unsolved ambiguity. Tabucchi is interested in the interior lives of his characters but everything that happens there remains unclear, not really describable except in the most cursory way. His characters do not have psychologies in the traditional sense, "psychology" implies certain identifiable attributes and a certain consistency of character. The strongest thing a Tabucchi character has is perhaps a vague and growing suspicion or a never quite articulated emotion. "Things" have special importance in these stories or sometimes seem to because they seem to have a more stable existence than the characters themselves. In "The Riddle" an automobile that may have belonged to Proust is only one uncertainty in a story where nothing is certain, the car is the dominant image of the story, it is the central thing which draws our attention, it seems to tie the various aspects of the story together. Everything about the unlikely events related in the story is shady and shadowy and perhaps nothing more than a dream. Only the car seems to hold some significant meaning, carry some symbolic weight but ....but it doesn't. Its just a riddle after all.
Tabucchi's point in these stories is that the only way to make sense of ambiguous reality is to simplify it for ourselves. So the story crafting process for him is a playful one. The reader may want a solution or think he is supposed to look for one but there is not necessarily one there to be found. Not all the stories work in the same way. He has more than one tactic. Some are more conventional and some more fantastic. But all refuse to simplify, and so remain in the end ambiguities or complex puzzles for which there are no solutions.
An intriguing aesthetic.

Tabucchi fits in with Kafka and Nabokov and Borges and Cortazar & Calvino, like them he could be called a "fabulist", and fables are powerful because they remain ambiguous like parables or myths. Tabucchi's touch however is particularly appealing because of its lightness. He seems at times to revel in the ambiguities he describes, perhaps in the way a surrealist revels in the anarchy of a particularly unusual dream.

These is my least favorite of Tabucchi's books; however, it is still sufficiently good that I recommend it.

In his notes preceeding the stories, Tabucchi states: "Misunderstandings, uncertainities, belated understandings, useless remorse, treacherous memories, stupid and irredeemable mistakes, all these irresisibly fascinate me ..." That fascination is the basis for several of these stories.

The title story is begins as a court scene in which the judge, the defendent and the narrator were good friends in the past and discover what roles they must play in the present.

"Waiting for Winter" follows the widow of an important literary figure as she does what is expected of her and what her emotions lead her to do.

"Spells" tells of a summer holiday with an aunt and a cousin whose dislike of her step father and her interest in magic may have gone a bit too far.

"The Trains That Go to Madras" follows a narrator whose cabin mate is Peter Schlemihl (of literary fame).

"Sleight of Hand" follows an organized crime courier who knows he is growing too old and tire for his job.

The remaining stories show equal diversity and equal interest in life in some sense out of focus, uncertain, ambiguous. As usual, Tabucchi is well worth reading but if you are unfamiliar with him, I'd suggest that you read Letter From Casablanca first if you prefer short stories or Requiem if you prefer novellas.

Like many of Tabucchi's other works, this book is set in Portugal, and this time most of the action takes place in the more provincial northern city of Oporto. The novel opens there as Manolo the gypsy finds a headless body.

The Lisbon journalist, Firmino, working for the tabloid O Acontecimento, and a man of literary ambitions of his own, is sent to Oporto to follow the unfolding story. This book follows his investigation as he discovers the identity of the dead man, why the crime was committed and the perpetrators. Tabucchi, never one to write a simple and straightforward story, doesn't begin to do so here. Although the reader can learn the identity of the dead man without even opening the book and the crime is solved with very little effort, there are undercurrents that wend their way through every page of this novel.

Two people assist Firmino in his quest: Dona Rosa, the woman who runs the pension where Firmino stays in Oporto, and Don Fernando, a lawyer who is better known as Attorney Loton because of his strong resemblance to the actor Charles Laughton. Both Dona Rosa and Fernando seem a little too sure of themselves, a little too well-connected, to be genuine, but Tabucchi manages to pull this off without resorting to cliches.

The crime is based on an actual event that occurred in 1966, during the time of the Salazar dictatorship, although the novel is set in present-day Portugal. However, the fact that much has remained unchanged in Portugal is a point not to be missed. The crime, itself, involves drug smuggling and police corruption and brutality by the Guardia National.

The characters seem to be, for the most part, outsiders, from Firmino, himself, to the luckless Damasceno Monteiro, to the gypsies, to the transvestite who actually witnessed the killing.

Firmino, who files one story after the other regarding this crime, is finally handed all the evidence he needs on a silver platter...right along with the head of Damasceno Monteiro. It is at this moment that Firmino realizes that he is a pawn and that Don Fernando, huffing and puffing, is leading him on.

As is usually the case, the police do not make certain relevant facts public, but these are just the facts the public needs to know in order to ensure that justice prevail. It is up to poor Firmino to reveal these bits of hidden information, to make sure the whole affair is not swept under the rug and neatly forgotten. Tabucchi does not provide us with an altogether satisfactory ending, but he does hold open the small possibility that justice will be done.

This is a thoughtful novel. The characters are well-drawn, the descriptions of Oporto are engaging and the prose is smooth and even. The book is also rich in detail. Firmino's driving ambition is to write about Elio Vittorini and his influence on the Portuguese novel and he speaks of finding Lukacs's methods useful to his studies. Don Fenando speaks extensively of being greatly influenced by the legal scholar Hans Kelsen, even having gone so far as to follow him to Berkeley and Geneva as a student. "His theories about the Grundnorm had become my obsession," Don Fernando says.

This is heady stuff, but Tabucchi handles it well. Don Fernando often speaks of others, including Freud, Mitscherlich and Jean Amery as well. Fernando, though, finally chooses to leave theory behind and opt for action instead, defending those who had suffered unnecessarily in courts of law. Don Fernando's choice of action-over-words has a profound influence on Firmino.

For a book about such a heinous crime, The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro is surprisingly gentle. Thoughtful and extremely well-written, it echoes lightly long after one has finished the last page.

I am a die-hard Antonio Tabucchi fan and had ordered The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro prior to its release by the publisher. Read my review in this context.

The novel begins with a gypsy finding a corpse ... the initial scene is interesting in terms of the socio-political critique of the Portugese/Spanish treatment of the gypsies. Like Tabucchi's previously published Fernando Pessoa, the main character is a journalist; the story moves in a direction different than that implied by the opening scene. However, the expectation of the exploration of socio-political nature is met.

While I prefer Tabucchi's work outside of the "thriller" genre of the last two novels, his writing (and its translation) are so well done that the genre is unimportant - in any genre, he writes stories that make you think as well as making you loath to set the book down.

If you like literary thrillers, The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro is certainly in the same category as Canone Inverso, Class Trip, and The Name of a Bullfighter all of which are in some way masterful.

Letter from Casablanca is a collection of unrelated short stories. While Tabucchi shows the same skill and control that he shows in his novellas, I'll admit to a preference for the latter. However, the title story of this collection is not to be missed - it purports to be a letter written to a sister whom the letter's author has not contacted for 18 years. They had been split - the boy to Argentina, the girl to "up North" after a family catastrophe.

"Voices" is a tale told from the perspective of an individual who mans a "crisis clinic line". "Theatre" is set in colonial Africa where an Englishman entertains a young Portuguese colonial functionary with weekly theater.

If you enjoy short stories or have read Tabucchi's novellas, you should read this collection - and everyone should read the title story, "Saturday Afternoon" is a family tale, again of loss and separation, of "hiding your head under the sand". The boy in a family that has suffered the lost of the father, hides himself in his Latin lessons.

"Heavenly Bliss" is of an artistic young woman accepting a job as a personal secretary who serves more as a companion to an older woman with an interest in all things Japanese.

People trying to artsy about their memories of Vespa's, it's a non-electric yawn machine...pass it by.

Yes, boring guy is right. If you've never been on a real vespa, or is you've only driven one on the freeway in Houston, this may be boring, but anyone who's ever taken to the road on a proper bike will love the photos alone. It chronicals a lifestyle and trying to advertise for something that everyone's already doing is easy. Indispensibly cool when trying to explain to people what you ride.

I don't know what that other review is all about. If you own a vespa you'll love this. TONS of old ads, calendars, factory shots etc give a great overview of the vespa legend.

I was very disappointed by the Tabucchi's Dreams. The author attempts to recreate the dreams of twenty or so canonical figures from Western civilization. I felt that author made no effort to penetrate the psyche of these great human beings. The dreams were recreated by an obviously shallow reading of bio-sketches. If you want to know what I mean, select one of the characters you know very well and read his dream. I am familiar with Debussy's music and have no qualms about suggesting that Debussy's dream is a mediocre parody of his "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun".

The same problems persist in the Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa. This short work offended me more than the Dreams. I adore Pessoa and his poetry. It was heartbreaking to see all his heteronyms turn into colorless characters that stroll through this story. I consider Ricardo Reis to be the heteronym closest to Pessoa's personality. Unfortunately Reis comes back to the dying Pessoa to tell him that he didn't leave Portugal. Am I missing something here?? In short, any average reader of Pessoa can write a better book on the confrontations of the heteronyms with their creator.

This book is a collection of short stories of dreams of various major artists or influences on the arts - from Daedalus to Freud. It is a book that makes me wish to be more broadly educated in European literature - for when I was familiar with the biography and works of the individual, the matching of the imagined dream to the individual was more clear. For example, the dream of Federico Garcia Lorca picks up on his work regarding deepsong. Lorca is on stage singing a Gypsy song "a song about duels and orange groses, passion and death" ... A small black dog leads him towards his death as a traitor ... The dream is a wonderful mix of clarity and chaotic jumps, as are real dreams.

Tabucchi writes in his normal taut prose - with wonderful lines to mull over: "Life is indecipherable, answered Pessoa. Never ask and never believe. Everything is hidden."

But this book, unlike his other works requires significant knowledge of his reader. If you've never read Tabucchi, I would suggest that you begin with any of his other books. If you are a Tabucchi fan, this new book will not disappoint you.