Una historia muy tierna, pero al mismo tiempo desgarradora . Al leerlo no pude evitar pensar en lo difícil que ha de ser vivir en una dictadura. En cuanto a los personajes, me encariñé profundamente con el señor Pereira; quisiera tomar una limonada y hablar del alma y la resurrección de la carne con él.
El final me destrozó por completo pero me pareció perfecto, Pereira estaría con el doctor Cardoso y el retrato de su esposa en Francia. Espero no se sienta solo y logre encontrar su yo hegemónico. Más que nada quiero que sea feliz, se lo merece.

This was a book about a middle aged widower whose life undergoes a dramatic change when he meets a young couple. It is set in Portugal and has many political references and should be interesting if you are familiar with that part of the world- I was not. Despite the political undercurrents, I enjoyed this quick read and the author has done a great job bringing the beauty of Portugal to life. I want to visit it so badly now.
This was a book that I will remember for a long time because of the writing even though the end was too abrupt for me.

How do people come to perform heroic deeds? This novella is one of the best character studies I have read - Pereira's actions speak for themselves while we simultaneously sort through Pereira's own moral confusion steeped in loneliness, depression, and poor health.

Surely, this testimony has been written for the confessional rather than the courtroom; this is what I would declare.

I learned of this book from 'Discontent and its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London' by Moshin Hamid, another great writer of short books with strong moral compasses.

A delightful, understated novel demonstrating how an ordinary, relatively uninformed person can make a difference. The story takes the form of an account by Pereira (we are constantly reminded of this by insertions of “sostiene Pereira” or “Pereira sostiene”) of events which occurred in his life in Lisbon in 1938. Pereira is an overweight, middle-aged widower, in charge of the culture section of a local magazine Lisboa. He lives on his own and talks to the portrait of his deceased wife. By chance Pereira reads an article on death by Francesco Monteiro Rossi and thinks it might be useful to have him as a collaborator writing advance obituaries of famous authors. He contacts Rossi who turns out to be an impoverished young man very keen to earn some money. His articles prove to be unpublishable in the magazine as Rossi has a clear radical bent about which Pereira finds more when he meets Rossi’s girlfriend Marta and another associate who goes off to the Alentejo to recruit for the radicals fighting in the Spanish civil war.

At that time, Portugal, ruled by the dictator Salazar, was clearly on the side of Franco. Pereira, while recognizing the unsuitability of Rossi’s articles, nevertheless pays the young man from his own pocket. The beauty of Tabucchi’s writing is how he creates such an empathy of the reader with Pereira that one feels his enjoyment of the lemonade and herb omelet and later, his brief bathe in the sea, more than any sense of his awareness of the political environment. In fact, Pereira’s interest in French authors leads to a discussion with his director who remarks on the impropriety of printing “Vive la France!”, even in a historical context. Although his doctor at the spa, where he goes to take the waters and lose some weight, tells him that he is moving to France to avoid the suppression in Portugal, Pereira does not seem unduly worried. Things come to a head when an exhausted Rossi comes back into his life, fleeing from the authorities who have already arrested his associate. There is a splendid and unexpected ending, which I am not going to reveal.

The art of Tabucchi lies in evoking our interest in Pereira as an ordinary person and revealing only gradually, almost imperceptibly, the surrounding political climate and its dangers. This is made very evident by the end of the novel and Pereira’s action is an intelligent response, which is both in line with his character and yet quite unexpected.

Un gran bel libro.
Nel 1938, a Lisbona, il giornalista Pereira vive -anzi, sopravvive- ancorato al passato, in uno stato di stasi. Parla con la fotografia della moglia morte, vive da solo, non ha amici e dopo trent'anni come cronista per un grande giornale ora si è trasferito in un giornale nuovo e piccolo, per dirigerne la pagina culturale.

Finché, per un caso, non incrocia il cammino del giovane Monteiro Rossi, uno studente universitario che aveva scritto una tesi di filosofia sulla morte, argomento al quale Pereira si sta interessando.
L'incontro con lo studente e con la sua ragazza provocherà un lento ma inevitabile mutamento nella personalità di Pereira. Dalla morte il suo pensiero virerà sull'anima, la realtà comincerà a filtrare nella sua vita, gli eventi di attualità acquisteranno sempre maggiore importanza: la guerra civile in Spagna, la Germania nazista e l'Italia fascista in ascesa in Europa, la trasformazione totalitaria del Portogallo.

Alla fine l'epilogo è quasi prevedibile, ma arriva come un atteso e agognato riconoscimento della rinascita dell'anima di Pereira, oltre che della denuncia di quanto accadeva e di come fosse facile manipolare le idee della gente. E' tremendo quando si legge che, dalle trasmissioni clandestine di Radio Londra, sentono dire che anche il Portogallo è una dittatura, e riflettendoci un poco decidono che è vero, sono diventati una dittatura: i cambiamenti avvengono poco per volta, senza proclami netti e repentini, erodendo una pietra alla volta, finché la Repubblica scompare per lasciare il posto alla censura, al pensiero imposto, alla polizia segreta, alle torture e agli omicidi.

Un romanzo dalla scrittura molto particolare, dalla genesi intrigante e dal messaggio dirompente, attualissimo.