The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa is the essential Lisbon reading — a fragmentary prose poem written by Pessoa's heteronym Bernardo Soares, a Baixa bookkeeper who meditates on the city's streets and his own unquiet inner life. Pessoa spent his life in Lisbon; the city is on every page.
Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier (2004) takes a Swiss classicist to Lisbon after he finds a book by a Portuguese resistance doctor. The novel weaves between the present city and the Salazar era; it is atmospheric and serious about Lisbon's history.
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago (1991) was written while Saramago was living in Lisbon, and his Nobel Prize (1998) made him the city's most celebrated literary figure. The José Saramago Foundation in the Casa dos Bicos keeps his archive.
A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson (1999) is a crime novel set partly in contemporary Lisbon and partly in wartime Portugal during World War II. Wilson's sense of Lisbon's streets and moods is strong; it works as a thriller and as a portrait of the city.
Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi (1994) is an Italian novel set in 1938 Lisbon, during the Salazar dictatorship, following a newspaper editor who gradually awakens to the political situation around him. Short, precise, and extraordinary.