قصة الكتاب :
The Book of Disquiet is a book by Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa, published posthumously in 1982, 47 years after his death. Pessoa did pen an introduction to the book but attributed credits to his semi-heteronyms Bernardo Soares and Vicente Guedes. The book has been published in several languages, first in Portuguese and later in Spanish, German, Italian, French, English and Dutch. It has been a bestseller especially in German. The book is unique in that there is no continuous narrative or plot. It reads like an incomplete biography comprising of fragments of differing lengths that are akin to diary entries. These fragments were pieced together years after Pessoa passed away. The manuscript for The Book of Disquiet was found in a trunk after Pessoa’s death, along with several other of his works. He hardly published any of his works when he was alive.\r\n
\r\nThis work by Pessoa is filled with his musings, observations, ruminations, moods, dreams and the deepest revelations of his soul, which give it its richness and beauty. Pessoa calls the writings his ‘confessions’ and that there is ‘nothing’ in them as there is ‘nothing’ for someone like him to say. With this theme, Pessoa placed himself in the distinguished line of writers, from the late nineteenth century, for whom nullity itself was a muse. The themes he pondered upon, at the cost of losing himself, were regarding the pointlessness of all accomplishments, loneliness and how sorrow could affect the perception of our world. Throughout the novel, Soares documents his daily life as a bookkeeper and examines the disconnect between the vivid mental world we tend to inhabit and the routine daily world we get trapped in usually.\r\n
\r\n\r\nBesides the philosophical nature of the text and the insights it offers to many even today, the book also serves as a warning sign regarding the dangers of living an isolated life. It is a reflection of how intense examination of the inner-life we possess will always reveal its own set of losses and deaths. The writings also deal with eternal quests such as the desire to grasp at the meaning of life and death, God, good and evil, and the questions that plague the soul regarding love, reality and consciousness. The book creates a very unique experience for the readers, many of whom do not read it back-to-back as they normally would a novel but instead dip into it and discover what they need at different times.\r\n