Pessoa

Pessoa, one of the most enigmatic and brilliant authors of the 20th century, left behind more than 25,000 handwritten pages in a trunk after his untimely death in Lisbon. Drawing on this vast archive and previously unpublished family letters, Zenith not only recreates the writer's childhood in South Africa, the Lisbon bohemian circles he frequented in his youth, his unsuccessful attempts to make a living as a translator and editor, and his work writing slogans and business letters in English for various companies, but also the intellectual currents and events of the era. The author's prolific imagination and astonishing originality explain not only the transcendence of a single author through his heteronyms, but also his unique perspective on the eroticism and politics of his time. This monumental biography traces Pessoa's ability to both embody and name the modern experience of uprootedness, and offers us an extraordinary portrait of Lisbon, a city that the writer reinvented and filled with his wandering personalities.