Fernando Pessoa, Portugal s greatest poet, wrote one major piece of narrative prose in his life and it is an acknowledged classic of world literature. The Book of Disquiet , a meandering, melancholic series of reveries and meditations, is the diary of a lowly office clerk in 1930 s Lisbon. Seated at his desk in the Lisbon's Rua dos Douradores, Bernardo Soares writes his diary - a self-deprecating reflection on the sheer distance between the loftiness of his feelings and the humdrum reality of his everyday life. This is the first translation of a classic of existential literature a book acknowledged by critics as 'the most beautiful diary of the century'.