The Book of Disquiet

What it is about

Fernando Pessoa’s fragmentary work, largely voiced through the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, records office life, dreams, boredom, solitude, sensation, and the instability of self. It is less a conventional narrative than an atlas of consciousness assembled from notebooks that never became a final book. I need this book close whenever I start thinking the question has become simple.

Why I keep it

Pessoa's disquiet. A book to be tired with.

Key ideas

Beside it on the shelf · Philosophy & Meaning