The Woman of Porto Pim

3.8/5 ( ratings)

"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 Prizewinning author of Indian Nocturne and Pereira Declares comes 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 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 Parks teaches literary translation at IULM University in Milan, Italy.