Pereira Maintains


Pereira Maintains is a 1994 novel by the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi. It is also known as Pereira Declares and Declares Pereira. Its story follows Pereira, a journalist for the culture column of a small Lisbon newspaper, as he struggles with his conscience and the restrictions of the dictatorial regime of Antonio Salazar. Antonio Tabucchi won the Premio Campiello, Viareggio Prize and Premio Scanno in 1994 for the novel. It was adapted into a film, also called Sostiene Pereira, in 1996. It was the basis for the French comic book Pereira prétend, made by Pierre-Henry Gomont and published in 2016.

Plot

The novel is set in Portugal in the summer of 1938, during Salazar's dictatorship. Pereira, an old journalist on a Portuguese newspaper - the Lisboa - who loves literature and practically gives his life to it. When he reads an essay written by a young man about death, he calls the young man, whose name is Monteiro Rossi, to ask him to write "advance obituaries" about great writers who could die at any moment. Not having ever been much concerned with politics, Pereira's world is turned upside down when he begins to get to know the distracted and leftist youth. The articles he receives from Monteiro Rossi have a definite leftist slant and are completely unpublishable, but something continues to attract Pereira to him, perhaps the fact that his wife died before he could have children of his own. His visit to a clinic to help his ailing heart puts him in contact with a doctor, with whom he becomes close friends and discusses the doubts he is beginning to have about his isolated and apolitical life. In the end, fascist police visit Pereira and beat Monteiro Rossi to death. With the help of a phone call from his doctor friend, Pereira manages to slip an article about the murder and condemning the regime into the newspaper he works for, then flees the country using a fake passport.

People and works mentioned

It adds context to know the writers, literature and political references that comprise the world of this novel. In order of appearance, 1995 New Directions edition, translated by Patrick Creagh.
Pereira's rightist editor suggests:

Reception

Lawrence Venuti of The New York Times pointed out that the book became a success in Italy as a symbol of resistance against Silvio Berlusconi's government. Michael Arditti reviewed the book for The Daily Telegraph in 2010, and wrote: "Pereira Maintains is a concise, intense and original novel.... Tabucchi now takes his place alongside Irène Némirovsky, Sándor Márai and Stefan Zweig as one of the great Continental rediscoveries for English-speaking readers of recent years."