(Reviewed by JD Jung)
When I picked up Pereira Maintains at Paperback Exchange in Florence, Italy, I had no idea how relevant this novel would feel today. Set in Portugal in the summer of 1938, during the rise of fascism in Europe, Antonio Tabucchi’s novel is a powerful reminder that sometimes we have to stop being complacent and take a stand.
Dr. Pereira is a lonely widower and editor of the cultural page of a second-rate Lisbon newspaper. He prefers living in the past and staying out of politics. His editor-in-chief supports Portuguese nationalists and Franco’s forces in Spain, so Pereira carefully avoids controversy. Numerous people he meets, including his doctor, scold him for his apathy.
Everything changes when he hires young Monteiro Rossi to write obituaries of famous people before they die. Rossi submits an obituary for Spanish socialist poet Federico García Lorca, who was assassinated two years earlier. Pereira rejects it as too political, but Rossi continues submitting these left-leaning articles. Exasperated, Pereira continues to discard them, but while also feeling sorry for him, he pays him out of his own pocket. When Rossi finds himself in trouble, he goes to Pereira, and unintentionally gradually pulls Pereira into increasingly dangerous political activity.
Originally published in Italian in 1994, Pereira Maintains feels remarkably timely today. This gripping, beautifully written novel reminds us why we must remain vigilant when democracy and freedom are threatened