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Message is one of the greatest poems in the whole of Portuguese literature. It was also Fernando Pessoa's only book written in Portuguese to be published during his lifetime. At the time of its release, in October of 1934 (just over a year before the author's death), Europe of the Enlightenment and freedom was succumbing to the advance of modern dictatorships, the escalation of expansionary nationalisms and a brand of imperialism based on atheistic materialism which, half a decade later, would trigger the Second World War. It is out of this atmosphere of general European decline, and with unwavering focus on his own country in particular, that Pessoa orchestrates his Message: a telling of the great events and protagonists behind the genesis of Portugal, of the golden age of maritime discovery and of subsequent national entropy, all of it predictive and flowing towards the future construction of a new and different empire: the Fifth Empire, which, in the author's vision, would be a matrix of spirituality, messianism and millenarianism. Introduced and annotated by Antonio Apolinario Lourenco, the present bilingual edition of Message offers to its readers both a guide for understanding and an interpretation of the poem in light of the history of Portugal and the doctrines of esoteric and heterodox Christianity, all of which played a central role in the intellectual education of Fernando Pessoa. This bilingual edition, with translations by Martin Earl, is introduced and annotated by Antonio Apolinario Lourenco and illustrated by Fatinha Ramos.

Florbela Espanca (1894-1930) is one of Portugal's most celebrated poets. This bilingual anthology allows English-speaking readers to see why she deserves to be more widely known. Her poetry speaks passionately of longing, love and sexual liberation against the backdrop of the interwar années folles. After her untimely demise in 1930, Espanca quickly became the stuff of legend, thanks to the captivating combination of a tumultuous life-story and a string of signature sonnets that alternate between feelings of crushing failure and proclamations of lust for life. Edited by Cláudia Pazos-Alonso. Translation by Simon Park and illustrations by Margarida Fleming.

Five Coimbra Poets takes historical contingency - the accident - as a pretext that would seem to unify profoundly different poetical voices from diverse centuries. Dom Dinis and Sá de Miranda are joined by the two 19th century poets who most marked the memory of literature which the city keeps alive and which the poems themselves keep alive of the city. Both Antero de Quental and Camilo Pessanha are, in this sense, crucial. The lyrical intensity of landscape and cityscape is alive as well in Fernando Assis Pacheco, who perhaps wrote the most penetrating and moving poems about Coimbra and its worlds, which were those of his childhood, adolescence and early manhood. Edited by Luís Quintais. Translation by Martin Earl and illustrations by Alya Kuznetsova.