De Spaanse schrijver Enrique wordt uitgenodigd om deel te nemen aan Documenta, de internationale vijfjaarlijkse tentoonstelling voor hedendaagse kunst in Kassel. Hij moet er een levende kunstinstallatie vormen, door in een Chinees restaurant te gaan schrijven. In Kassel is hij omringd door talen die hij niet beheerst: het Duits, het Chinees, en de taal van de avant-gardistische kunst. En juist dat gegeven vervult hem van een eigenaardig, energiek soort optimisme.
The first of four special publications to accompany a year-long display of works from Barcelona's la Caixa Collection at Whitechapel Gallery, selected by and featuring newly-commissioned fictional works by some of the most original English and Spanish-language writers working today.
In Bartleby Co., an enormously enjoyable novel, Enrique Vila-Matas tackles the theme of silence in literature: the writers and non-writers who, like the scrivener Bartleby of the Herman Melville story, in answer to any question or demand, replies: "I would prefer not to." Addressing such "artists of refusal" as Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Duchamp, Herman Melville, and J. D. Salinger, Bartleby Co. could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), Bartleby embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, Bartleby is an utterly engaging work of profound and philosophical beauty.
The narrative follows Jose, a writer whose obsession with literature blurs the lines between reality and fiction. This work blends picaresque elements, diary entries, and philosophical reflections, featuring a host of literary figures like Cervantes and Kafka. As Jose navigates a journey through European cities and beyond, he confronts themes of loss and pain, offering readers a witty and erudite exploration of the literary world. The novel showcases Enrique Vila-Matas's status as a significant contemporary Spanish author.
Trying to be Ernest Hemingway is never easy. Surrounded by the writers, artists and eccentrics of '70s Parisian cafe culture, he dresses in black, buys two pairs of reading glasses, and smokes a pipe like Sartre.Never Any End to Paris is a hilarious, playful novel about literature and the art of writing, and how life never quite goes to plan.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE'A writer who has no equal in the contemporary landscape of the Spanish novel.' Roberto BolanoSamuel Riba is about to turn 60.
A reader's fictional tour of the art and lives of some of the great 20th-century Surrealists
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZEEnrique Vila-Matas's new novel is perhaps his greatest: 'playful and funny and among the best Spanish novelists' (Colm Toibin)Mac is not writing a novel.
"Arguably Spain's most significant contemporary literary figure" (Joanna Kavenna, The New Yorker)