Antonio Tabucchi

Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear.

I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

This story, which takes place one a Sunday in July in a hot, deserted Lisbon, is the Requiem that the character I refer to as ___ was called on to perform in this book. Were someone to ask me why I wrote this story in Portuguese, I would answer simply that a story like this could only be written in Portuguese; it's as simple as that. But there is something else that needs explaining. Strictly speaking, a Requiem should be written in Latin, at least that's what tradition prescribes. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be up to it in Latin. I realised though that I couldn't write a Requiem in my own language and I that I required a different language, one that was for me A PLACE OF AFFECTION AND REFLECTION.