Pereira Declares
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | Pereira Declares: A Testimony |
|---|---|
| Author: | Antonio Tabucchi, Patrick Creagh |
| Honors: | |
| Genres: | |
| Publisher: | New Directions Publishing Corporation |
“Are you living in another world, and you working for a newspaper?” his exasperated friend Father Antonio asks him. “Look here Pereira, for goodness sake go and find out what’s happening around you.”
Then Pereira meets a young man, Monteiro Rossi, and in a city where the very walls have ears and where those who know what’s good for them turn a blind eye to what goes on around them, he is forced to break out of the shell of his own inhibitions. In the process of facing reality and encountering the brutality of an authoritarian state, Pereira becomes a gentle hero the reader will long remember.
| Find it: |
|---|
This book was also published under the title Declares Pereira.
Reviews
Amazon.com
Antonio Tabucchi has accomplished a rare feat: a socio-political novel with a decided left-wing slant that succeeds as a thriller. It is told through the voice of an aging editor at a Portuguese newspaper in 1938 during fascist rule. A murder inspires the editor out of acquiescence, and an underground movement ensues. The book rose to immediate success in Italy in 1994, a time when Italian fascism resurfaced, and Tabucchi’s timely antidote to that movement was no doubt a factor in the novel’s popularity. But widespread appeal of the book had as much to do with the page-turning nature of the work as its politics—a testament to Tabucchi’s ability on both fronts.
