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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...

To kiss you should not involve such fear of imprecision I shouldn’t mind about the gallery attendant He is not staring That’s not what his torch and lanyard is for   I have seen at least four people holding hands already and I’m only just out of the revolving doors They weren’t unpeeling to the root To kiss you should not feel like anything other than embellishment They, people, loads of people, have staged kiss-ins at Sainsbury’s and in Southbank cafés precisely in solidarity with my freedom to kiss you They kissed en masse on Valentine’s Day with a hashtag and everything When that historian shot himself in Notre Dame two years ago, when Larousse dictionary mooted changing the definition of marriage, he was not thinking of me tarrying in this gallery gift shop, flicking postcards and studiously not-looking at you Larousse dictionary’s colophon is a woman blowing at a dandelion clock Have I used colophon correctly? Where are you   Dandelion comes from the French dent-de-lion, lion’s teeth   I am not biding my time   A lion would not baulk at kissing you, toothily   The French for dandelion is pissenlit This translates, broadly, as wet the bed I will wait   I could kiss you lightly, the side of your face, as if putting out a fire The gallery attendant is not looking at us I have spotted another couple kissing, a boy and a girl, like it was nothing, like they didn’t have to think about lions   When you puff at a dandelion clock, puff at its puff, it looks like you’re blowing a kiss   To kiss you would be plotlessness, and nothing like falling   The gallery attendant is not sizing up our haircuts In fact he’s looking the other way   The move was mine to make,   all gallery-hushed and happy as I reached for you   and   RIGHT   LET’S                                                                                

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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poetry

July 2011

Letter of a Madman

Guy de Maupassant

TR. Will Stone

poetry

July 2011

Introduction by the translator In the early hours of 2 January 1892, sensing the approach of insanity, the renowned...

Prize Entry

April 2015

How things are falling.

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2015

i.   Oyster cards were first issued to members of the British public in July 2003; by June 2015...

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May 2016

Postcard from Istanbul

Sydney Ribot

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May 2016

    Saturday       On March 19, at 1 p.m. in a café off Turnacibaşı St., an...

 

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