Pereira Maintains
by Antonio Tabucchi, translated by Patrick Creagh
Recommendations from our site
“This is a fascinating book. Antonio Tabucchi was Italian. He spent a lot of time in Lisbon and clearly loves Portugal and the Portuguese language. ‘Pereira maintains’ is an odd phrase. We quite quickly pick up that this is a police report. Pereira maintains ‘he met him one summer’s day…’ So we’re being told second hand something that Pereira has said. It’s a difficult way of writing because you’re at a distance from it. And you have to maintain the voice. And we see Pereira, this character, through a different pair of eyes……..This is the wonderful thing about this book. It’s got great themes, loyalty, trust, aspiration towards truth, the verity of things in a very short book, just 194 pages long. You can read it in a day. I think it’s the most wonderful novel of the last 20 years. I can’t think of anything I admire more.” Read more...
Philip Pullman, Children's Author
