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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...

I mind my pomegranate like an open door watch it from the corner of my bed with the lights on It grows on trees here so I mind my pomegranate & like an open door   it creaks fruitlessness; do all pomegranates stain like shadows? I crack its fruit onto the floor and mind my pomegranate like an open door, watch from the corner of my bed   The pomegranates felt a sense of belatedness so they imitated until they created their own culture By this, of course, I mean the pomegranates felt a sense of belatedness so   their art was modelled after Chronos, engendering time and all its tensions Even building in their prime the pomegranates felt a sense of belatedness so they created until they imitated their own   Have you ever heard of the Heraclitean pomegranate? Or seen its shape-shifting jewels whip light from an egg-yolk into vanishing air? Oh but have you ever heard of the Heraclitean pomegranate?   Tell me, when was the last time you fed the pomegranate, allowed its composition to transform you? Spill it! Have you ever heard of the Heraclitean pomegranate? Or seen it whip jewels like a shapeshifter?   I was pomegranate the other day and tripped over a bur Nowadays, I always get a sprain when I pomegranate My grandfather said he was pomegranate the other day and tripped—   like when the colonisers withdrew and left his tree exposed to the hewing I don’t want to think about when I was pomegranate The other day I tripped over It was a blur Nowadays, I always forget my name     This pomegranate is like a pomegranate: it falls from the sky and stains everything red on impact It’s deaf to the screaming children This pomegranate is like a pomegranate:   you can’t tell which way or who it’ll split For fate decides—meaning power decides It’s too late when this pomegranate is like a pomegranate falls from the sky and stains everything red

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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fiction

June 2017

Ferocity

Nicola Lagioia

TR. Antony Shugaar

fiction

June 2017

A pale three-quarter moon lit up the state highway at two in the morning. The road connected the province...

Interview

March 2016

Interview with Han Kang

TR. Deborah Smith

Sarah Shin

Interview

March 2016

Han Kang is a disquieting storyteller who leads the reader into the very heart of human experience, where the...

Interview

Issue No. 1

Interview with China Miéville

Ben Eastham

Interview

Issue No. 1

It is a cliché to say that a writer’s work resists classification. It is ironic then that China Miéville,...

 

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