Requiem: A Hallucination (1991, tr: Margaret Julia Costa, 1994) is the only book Tabucchi (1943-2012) wrote in Portuguese rather than his native Italian. In a way it’s something of sad love letter to the country in which he would spend much of his time. But more than that, it’s a feverish meander through an unusually hot day where dream and reality are equal.

At the start, the narrator, name undeclared but clearly Tabucchi himself, is sitting on a bench at noon waiting to meet his guest (“he’s a great poet, perhaps the greatest poet of the twentieth century, he died years ago”), who is also unnamed but clearly Fernando Pessoa. But, realising that the twelve o’ clock meeting is more likely to be midnight than midday, as that’s the time ghosts are more likely to appear, he sets off to kill time in a deserted Lisbon.

Along the way he meets many a person, living, dead, or imagined, that occupy in some way his past. A friend’s last words linger on unexplained; his father as a young man enquires about his last days. In the casual conversations that arise, the search for the past can only ever be inconclusive. And when the narrator finally meets his guest, their brief dialogue helps loosen the reverence the pupil has for his master.

It’s a curious fever dream of a book soaked in sadness, like a lone trumpet keening on an empty street. But in its nostalgic search it also finds that simple pleasures and traditions link us to the past.