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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...

Many years ago a large Russian man with the longest tendrils of the softest white hair came to live in the fastest growing town in Europe which at the time happened to be in the southwest of England Very little is known about why he came there or what he did with himself but one thing relating to his daily round that can be set down with utmost confidence is that whenever the Russian man needed groceries he’d fold himself into his small maroon car and drive to a retail park in the suburbs to get them And probably the reason he went to that retail park and not another was because there was a very pleasant supermarket in that retail park which aside from Saturday mornings naturally never got too busy and as such there was always an available parking space up near the exit and entrance doors and this in all likelihood suited the Russian man very well because he would likely have had tremendous difficulty finding his own car if it was only shoved haphazardly in there somewhere among all the other cars parked one after the other with cracking midday sunlight spreading out all over them diluting their already indistinguishable roofs in the practically endless carpark The Russian man’s car was fairly distinguishable for the reason that it was ancient which meant it was a distinctly vintage colour and had the finish furthermore of an old immoveable garden gate which meant it could hold its own against the suburban sun’s brash emanation But in all likelihood the Russian man did not in any case know what his own car looked like so the only way he could find it was to be certain of where he left it and this perhaps explains why the Russian man liked to park his small maroon car up near the entrance and exit doors of the supermarket which despite its commodious proportions had the familiar feel and botherless charm of a corner-shop Right there on the perimeter of this booming yet visionless town in the southwest of England   Once inside the supermarket the Russian man would seize a basket from the pile that could always be counted on to

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...

READ NEXT

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September 2014

The Mediatisation of Contemporary Writing

Nick Thurston

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September 2014

Trying to figure out what marks contemporary literature as contemporary is a deceptively complicated job because the concept of...

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February 2014

Another Way of Thinking

Scott Esposito

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February 2014

I. There is no substitute for that moment when a book places into our mind thoughts we recognise as our...

poetry

Issue No. 2

Portraits of Pierre Reverdy and Three Poems

Sam Gordon

poetry

Issue No. 2

ANDRÉ BRETON The most memorable thing about our meetings [around 1919-1920] was the almost complete bareness of the room in...

 

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