Fin Keegan

LIKE THE WORK of Herta Muller and Victor Pelevin, Antonio Tabucchi’s Pereira Declares (Sostiene Pereira, 1994) observes the life of the individual under the strictures of State oppression: unlike them, in fact unlike most writers treating this theme these days, Tabucchi himself grew up in a democracy, in his case post-war Italy (albeit an Italy recovering from Fascism and war: the day after he was born his father cycled mother and child home through a Pisa all but destroyed by Nazi and Allied fighting). He has however steeped himself in Portuguese culture and is now a lusophile to the Beckettian degree of being able to compose high literary art–the novella, Requiem–in his adopted language… Read MORE of my review of Antonio Tabucchi’s Pereira Declares