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.