Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was born in Lisbon, spent nine years of his childhood in Durban, South Africa, and then returned to his native city, where he earned a modest income as a commercial translator and lived for his writing. Most of his vast body of work was published posthumously.

Richard Zenith is an acclaimed translator and the author of Pessoa: A Biography. He produced the first complete English translation of Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet and won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation with Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems. He lives in Lisbon, Portugal.