Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper in Lisbon, keeps a journal of his inner life, his dreams, his observations of the city he rarely leaves. Pessoa wrote these fragments throughout his life under this heteronym, one of many identities he created, and they were found in a trunk after his death and published decades later. The prose is melancholy and precise, finding in the ordinary the texture of existence itself. Soares achieves nothing, goes nowhere, and records everything. The book has no plot, only a consciousness observing itself. Pessoa gave his heteronyms complete biographies. Soares is the one who wrote about having nothing to say and saying it beautifully.