Since Italo Calvino's death in 1985, Antonio Tabucchi has emerged as the novelist that best exemplifies Italian narrative at the turn of the century. Tabucchi in some measure follows in the path blazed by Calvino in that his writing continues in the nonideological vein of the postneorealist novel. Also, the qualities that Calvino singles out in his Lezioni americane: Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio (1988; translated as Six Memos for the Next Millennium, 1988) as befitting postmodern narrative--quickness and lightness--are also distinctive traits of Tabucchi's work.

Born in 1943 in Vecchiano, a small town in the Tuscan countryside, Tabucchi studied at the University of Pisa and at the prestigious Scuola Normale. In the late 1960s, as part of his studies in Portuguese literature, Tabucchi was introduced to the work of Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), the Portuguese writer who is widely regarded as one of this century's most original poets. Pessoa wrote poetry...