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Enrique Vila-Matas
Enrique Vila-Matas was born in Barcelona in 1948. His works include Bartleby & Co, Montano, Never Any End to Paris, The Vertical Journey, winner of the Premio Romulo Gallegos, and Dublinesque, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. 'February 2008' is an excerpt from his novel Dietario Voluble, published by Anagrama in 2008.

Articles Available Online


Writers from the Old Days

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Issue No. 13

Enrique Vila-Matas

TR. J. S. Tennant

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Issue No. 13

Augusto Monterroso wrote that sooner or later the Latin American writer faces three possible fates: exile, imprisonment or burial.   I met Roberto Bolaño...

poetry

January 2015

Litanies of an Audacious Rosary

Enrique Vila-Matas

TR. Rosalind Harvey

poetry

January 2015

FEBRUARY 2008   * I’m outraged, but I’ve learned a way of reasoning that quickly defuses my exasperation. This...

            Zut, zut, zut, zut             – Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu   Sostène Zanzibar was not feeling himself that day; someone else was A journalist from an English paper Name of Phyllidia Or possibly Petronella Something along those lines The interview had gone remarkably well Such probing questions Very stimulating, very in-depth There was no denying that Sienna – or possibly Serena – was thoroughly a young woman Hang on, cross that out Was a thorough young woman Very thorough indeed   In a bid to impress her host, she had taken up gesticulation with all the fervour of a new convert It was a joy to behold Her impeccably-manicured hands would suddenly flutter away from the warmth of her lap, describing graceful ellipses as if trying to conjure up words that could not possibly exist Ever In any language Even French   When the ink ran out of her biro, Zanzibar produced a pencil from his inside pocket with a little flourish ‘Men,’ he said, ‘alwez ave two penceuls’ He almost winked, but thought better of it ‘Women,’ she said a little later, sitting on his face, wearing nothing but her high-heeled boots, ‘always have two pairs of lips’ She almost added Try these on for size, big boy, but thought better of it too   Allegra – or possibly Anushka – had struggled to fully comprehend the answers to some (if not most) of her questions The fact that the former usually bore little (if any) relation to the latter did not help Neither did Zanzibar’s scattergun delivery nor his baffling habit of peppering his sentences with arcane references to Heidegger and Blanchot Whenever he switched to pigeon English, he sounded like Jacques Derrida dubbed by Inspector Clouseau, which proved an even greater source of confusion Of course, now that she was grinding her crotch against his salient features, that his nose kept popping in and out of her prize orifices, Zanzibar’s discourse was largely inaudible anyway This was as it should be She wanted to move beyond surface meaning, to experience his words at

Contributor

August 2014

Enrique Vila-Matas

Contributor

August 2014

Enrique Vila-Matas was born in Barcelona in 1948. His works include Bartleby & Co, Montano, Never Any End to...

Leaving Theories Behind

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Issue No. 9

Enrique Vila-Matas

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Issue No. 9

I. I went to Lyon because an organisation called Villa Fondebrider invited me to give a talk on the relationship between fiction and reality as...

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Art

May 2012

Art's Fading Sway: Russian Ark by Aleksandr Sokurov

Scott Esposito

Art

May 2012

I have often fallen asleep in small theatres. It is an embarrassing thing to have happen during one-man shows,...

Interview

January 2016

Interview with Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Roland Glasser

Interview

January 2016

Roof terrace of the Shangri-La hotel, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, USA; late afternoon, 8 October 2015. We ensconce ourselves in...

fiction

Issue No. 14

Beetle

Joanna Kavenna

fiction

Issue No. 14

SKITAFLIT, DAY 49   704 Dawn Breaks above the grey-dusted grey-fronted houses 903 Well the office is looking just...

 

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