Dr. Pereira is overweight of fragile health and he sees old age fast approaching. His wife has already passed away and he fills the compass of his small life working in near isolation on the Culture Page of a fledgling Lisbon newspaper.

Pereira enjoys the passing company of a few acquaintances, but only a few; a waiter, a priest and a ghost or two from his university days, but mostly he talks to a photograph of his late wife.

The newspaper Pereira works for is small, the page he edits concerns itself with literature from the past and its personalities, and Pereira’s main contribution to it is the translation of ineffectual short stories from French.

In short, Pereira is a man with no clout and little significance, especially without his wife, and he knows it.

The action of the piece takes place in Lisbon, the city that sparkles in the glare of the summer sun when the thick sea fog is blown away by the fresh Atlantic salt breeze. However Pereira lives in the 1930s, and while Lisbon sparkles in the bright sunshine, the dark clouds of Fascism have already gathered over much of Europe and have begun to throw their grim, menacing shadow over Pereira’s beloved Portugal.

An encounter with a young revolutionary couple is what brings Dr. Pereira to the point of committed action. The couple (in love with each other of course, but even more committed to the cause) elicit his sympathy and draw him unwittingly into involvement in clandestine, political activism. His constant protest against involvement is “But I’m only the editor of a small Culture Page.”

Events move along. Pereira is galvanised into taking action that is rich with danger and imagination. He strikes a daring blow for freedom at great risk to himself, and the indolent, ineffective academic is transformed into a hero.

It’s a short account, so readable and such an important little book that it’s a real pity Irish bookshops don’t seem to carry it or any other of Tabbuchi’s writing. Thank goodness for Amazon.