A centenary Pessoa - Fernando Pessoa

`Pessoa's amazing personality is as beguiling and mysterious as his unique poetic output. We cannot learn too much about him,' wrote William Boyd. Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) is at least four writers, and A Centenary Pessoa includes a broad selection of his poems, and a hundred pages of his prose (much of it originally written in English). To this core the editor adds an essay by Octavio Paz, a photobiography, a critical anthology and two `posthumous interviews'. In an age when poets spoke through personae and masks, Pessoa found `heteronyms', complete with their own styles and biographies. At the heart of this book are poems Pessoa wrote as his quietly lyrical self, as the pagan and bucolic Alberto Caeiro, the neoclassical dilettante Ricardo Reis, and the wildly confessional Alvaro de Campos.

A Centenary Pessoa is a rich introduction for those curious about his oeuvre. `One of the evident giants', George Steiner said; `perhaps the greatest poet of the twentieth century,' wrote Antonio Tabucchi. During his lifetime he published in small circulation journals and left, at his death, a chaotic trunk of manuscripts. Now his portrait appears on Portuguese banknotes, a university bears his name, a Pessoa Foundation occupies his final home, his body has been reburied near the remains of Camoes and Vasco da Gama. Honour to all four of him.