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 I'd never heard of Fernando Pessoa till I came across The Book of Disquiet from Penguin Classics. Pessoa, who was born in Portugal in 1888, was originally a poet. A very odd one: he published much of his earlier work under three "heteronyms," as he called them, for whom he invented individual biographies, styles, and visions.
He pulls the same trick in The Book of Disquiet, though it's in prose. Its "author" is the pathologically introspective assistant bookkeeper, Bernardo Soares. "Imaginary figures have more depth and truth than real ones," he observes.
At first, the poor reader may become a little paranoid about such literary practices. I even began to wonder: Did Pessoa himself actually exist? Was he, perhaps, the invention of his brilliant "translator," Richard Zenith (that surname!), in the manner of some playful, Borgesian fiction?
This paranoia seems to be exactly the effect Pessoa's book —he calls it "a factless autobiography"—is meant to induce. Technically, it slides from one memorable insight to another without any formal rigour. It insists, over and over, that human beings lack a firm centre; that our egos are nothing but fleeting dreams, impressions, anxieties.
The Book of Disquiet constitutes a marvellous, paradoxical journey: "Travel is the traveller. What we see isn't what we see but what we are," Soares says.
Sadly but appropriately, the genius of the ego-less Pessoa went unrecognized till after his death in 1935.
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 Eric McCormack is the author of many critically acclaimed novels. His most recent book, The Dutch Wife, was a nominee for the 2003 Toronto Book Award. McCormack teaches English Literature at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.
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