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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...

ASSORTED BAKELITE STARS Placed in startlingly elegant nooks, these stars are meant to inspire and encourage the idea of ‘night’, even though residents incarcerated in the Containment Room obviously don’t deserve such nice things Statistics show that the stars most likely to go missing are puce, gently-bruised green, dirty black, orange and fuckboy pink Small and prone to breaking, these stars are incredibly easy to remove and appropriate, but that does not mean you should do it Conversely, some stars have been found on the beach with extra arms and large insect genitalia, but as these do not fall under the purview of ‘Items That Have Gone Missing’, we will not discuss them here   ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS One hundred million dollars was allegedly left in the Containment Room by D Alamelu, aka Iyiyo Alamelu, during a ten-day incarceration period in 1997 A longtime resident of the institute and avid Kho Kho player, D Alamelu was also a notorious extortionist, who wandered the hopelessly unsafe halls with wads of foreign currency peering out from the top of her sari blouse She was attacked twice by people she knew, who took her money, beat her with a field hockey stick, and explained that this was what happened to young women who walked alone in hopelessly unsafe halls D Alamelu asked if the wads of cash made everything worse, and they said yes, because it was the truth Both times, they left her with a broken jaw, a black eye, a fractured wrist and the field hockey stick  It was only much later that she would allegedly leave one hundred million dollars somewhere on the beach of the Containment Room By then, her jaw and wrist would be completely useless And while she could still see potentially dangerous things from far away, her eye kept leaking something that smelled like a dead lizard   RECTANGULAR PORTIONS OF MATTRESSES These mattresses, crafted by local artisans and installed by a nameless global corporation, encourage the idea of  ‘beach’ in such an effective manner that they

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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January 2016

Suite

Pierre Senges

TR. Jacob Siefring

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January 2016

‘Suite’ was born of an invitation Pierre Senges received to contribute to an anthology on the future of the novel (Devenirs...

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Issue No. 4

Tibetan Kitsch

Evan Harris

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Issue No. 4

I first glimpsed the Potala Palace behind the bending legs of a prostitute. She swayed, obscuring a vista of...

poetry

January 2012

Matisse: Tahiti (1930)

Campbell McGrath

poetry

January 2012

If I were young again I would forego Tahiti and move to America to begin a new life in...

 

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