The Woman of Porto Pim

"Triumphs of nuance and suggestion."-- Chicago Tribune "Ruminative, elegiac, and mordantly funny, Tabucchi's prose conjures a state between waking and dreaming."-- The New York Times From "A Whale's View of Man": Always so feverish, and with those long limbs waving about. Not rounded at all, so they don't have the majesty of complete, rounded shapes sufficient unto themselves, but little moving heads where all their strange life seems to be concentrated. They arrive sliding across the sea, but not swimming, as if they were birds almost, and they bring death with frailty and graceful ferocity . . . Sometimes they sing, but only for themselves, and their song isn't a call to others, but a sort of longing lament. They soon get tired and when evening falls they lie down on the little islands that take them about and perhaps fall asleep or watch the moon. They slide silently by and you realize they are sad. By the Médicis Prize--winning author of Indian Nocturneand Pereira Declarescomes a collage of evocative, hallucinatory fragments about the Azores islands from the perspective of an Italian traveler seeking something that he is yet to discover. Along the way, he collects legends, relics, and stories of the island-dwellers: an elegant married woman's love of an Azorean fisherman, glimpses of a whaling expedition, and assorted shipwrecks, both figurative and real. Antonio Tabucchi(1943--2012) is one of the most beloved Italian writers of his generation. His works have been translated into more than forty languages and have received many prestigious prizes including the Médicis Prize and the Europäeischer Staatspreis. His most celebrated titles include Pereira Declares, Little Misunderstandings of No Importance, Requiem: A Hallucination, and Indian Nocturne. In France he was named a Chevalier of Arts and Letters. Tim Parksteaches literary translation at IULM University in Milan, Italy.

One of the most beloved writers of his generation, Antonio Tabucchi was born in Pisa in 1943 and died in Lisbon in 2012. A master of short fiction, he won the Prix Médicis Etranger for Indian Nocturne, the Italian PEN Prize for Requiem: A Hallucination, the Aristeion European Literature for Pereira Declares, and was named a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Together with his wife, María José de Lancastre, Tabucchi translated much of the work of Fernando Pessoa into Italian. Tabucchi's works include Little Misunderstandings of No Importance, Letter from Casablanca, and The Edge of the Horizon.

Tim Parks teaches literary translation at IULM University in Milan. He is a literary critic and the author of An Italian Education, The Server, Dreams of Rivers and Seas, and Teach Us to Sit Still. Twice winner of the John Florio Prize for translation, Parks has translated works by Alberto Moravia, Italo Calvino, Roberto Calasso, Niccolò Machiavelli, Fleur Jaeggy, and Antonio Tabucchi.