‘In the middle of the conversations with myself that make up this book, I often feel a sudden need to talk to someone else, so I address the light hovering, as it does now, above the roofs of houses…’ Seated at his desk in the Lisbon’s Rua Dos Douradores, Bernardo Soares, an assistant book-keeper, 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 the critics as ‘the most beautiful diary of the century’ and voted by a panel of leading writers as one of the top 100 books of all time.