A Centenary Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa was born in Lisbon. As a young child he moved with his mother and stepfather to Durban, South Africa, where he was educated and learnt English. After a decade, Pessoa sailed back to Portugal, settling in Lisbon. He subsequently began work as a translator, and published poetry, prose and criticism. Though he had been interested in creating characters and identities since childhood, with the publication of his first poem in 1914, Pessoa started publicly creating different literary identities, penning works under their names and constructing full biographies for each of these ‘heteronyms’. Though not all his writing plays with authorial identity in this way, his now-famous work The Book of Disquiet does. Pessoa died in 1935 and has now garnered a reputation as one of Portugal’s best-known writers.