The Book of Disquiet

Now, I touched genius and it will not be forgotten. Forever it will live on my nightstand, waiting to be opened again…anywhere…anytime. Fernando Pessoa found the words to describe a searching soul like me. He must have written it for simple-complicated people like me. Perhaps it’s a manual on our souls, rather than a book?

“My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I’m two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren’t attached.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

When I tried to write a glowing review I made the mistake and read some of the comments and felt that many have already said what I feel. I am not alone, this almost unknown book has touched many other souls:

 The book is written in snatches, better to be dipped into at leisure than read straight thru. You’ll find yourself annotating passages, writing down quotes, rereading sections endlessly. You’ll begin to question the reality of your existence, if not your own sanity if you read it too thoroughly.

“In India, there are bitter vegetables people eat for their health — to ward off diabetes and counter the effects of a diet over-high in refined sugars. When I first lived in India, I hated those vegetables. Now I like them best of all. “Bitter” is not always a negative adjective. It may also restore life. It can serve as an antidote. There is something similar about The Book of Disquiet — a book about failure, tedium, and disconnection that is repeatedly beautiful and compelling, even life-giving.

Brilliant book. Beautiful, charming, depressing, and contradictory.

One of the best books I have ever read. Sometimes I am not sure it is me consuming the book or the book consuming me.

If the soul could speak and write, this is what it would look like.

It’s quite difficult to describe this book; it’s not about anything in particular. But if you have ever pondered the split seconds of mental webs strung in between your actual thoughts; if you have ever felt the presence of a question that threatens to disrupt your ability to function unless you write it down; if you have ever played with words and wondered if and how those words relate to what is real–then you must read Pessoa. One of the most compelling, fascinating, overwhelming things I have read. It will surely change you.

The best I can do at describing it would be when you’re sitting on a bus or train and look out at the nameless faces of the passengers and wonder what they’re thinking about, their inner struggles, their dreams. If Kafka and Nietzsche had a literally love child this would be the book he wrote.

(Reviews: Source Amazon)