The Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa published little during his lifetime, but left a trunk containing 29 notebooks and thousands of manuscript pages when he died in 1935. Written in Portuguese, English and French, the poems, plays, essays and short stories in the trunk covered a range of subjects and were authored by over forty different 'heteronyms' (or literary personas) devised by Pessoa. The poetry made Pessoa’s reputation as one of Portugal’s finest modernist writers, but this selection of his prose argues for him as a complete writer of genius.

Three of his alter-egos authored a majority of Pessoa’s poems, and each wrote with a distinctive style and sensibility. The Selected Prose contains essays in the form of manifestos announcing new literary movements (“Sensationism” and “Neopaganism”), introductions to imagined poetry collections, and translator’s prefaces—all written by different authors (but all Pessoa). In addition, there is imagined correspondence (“Letter to Two French Magnetists,” “Letter from a Hunchback Girl to a Metalworker”); disquisitions on American millionaires, James Joyce, astrology & translation; political satire (“The Anarchist Banker”); and excerpts from Pessoa’s masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet. A section of “Random Notes and Epigrams” includes at least two that ought to be universally adopted:
"I doubt, therefore I think."
&
"Be plural like the universe!"