Spatio-temporal Relativities in Antonio Tabucchi’s Urban Space

Abstract

“Era il venticinque di luglio del millenovecentotrentotto, e Lisbona scintillava nell’azzurro di una brezza atlantica, sostiene Pereira”. On this day, the protagonist of Antonio Tabucchi’s novel, Sostiene Pereira. Una testimonianza (1994), reads a journal containing the abstract of a thesis on the subject of death by a young man of Italian descent, Monteiro Rossi. The protagonist, Dr Pereira, is the editor of the arts section of a cautiously apolitical evening newspaper, Lisboa. On an impulse, he telephones Rossi and suggests they work together on writing commemorations of writers and cocodrilli, i.e., ready-to-run obituaries of writers who are not expected to live much longer.