The Book of Disquiet

The factless diary of Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper who fixes almost his entire life to a few blocks of the Lisbon Baixa. The map keeps to the grid he names again and again: Rua dos Douradores, where his office and rented room stand, the parallel Rua da Prata, the Rossio at the head of the lower town, and the Tagus riverfront where the pavement runs down to the water at Cais das Colunas.

Bernardo Soares

Rua dos Douradores

The office

This one downtown street is the narrator's whole world. He keeps ledgers by day in the firm of his employer Vasques and climbs at night to a hired upper room on the same street, until the office, the boss and the errand boy are nearly the only company the diary admits. He treats the confinement as a fate he has half chosen.

Bernardo Soares's office and rented room, Rua dos Douradores

explicit Pessoa names the street repeatedly but gives no house number, so this marks a representative point along Rua dos Douradores in the Baixa.

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