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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...

After sex that night, which was at best perfunctory, I lay on my back on top of the duvet with my knees drawn up to my chest, like I’d seen Maude do in The Big Lebowski Owen was in the bathroom and I could tell from the sporadic muffled yelps that he was tweezing his nose hair   ‘Gravity,’ I said aloud I’d read about gravity-assisted conception, how to give the swimmers a better chance Owen was the one who cooed over babies, so I assumed he would applaud my initiative   I was right Three weeks later, I waited nervously on a deckchair in our small garden, while Owen checked the pregnancy test One blue line meant no hCG hormone, no baby Two blue lines meant baby Of course it was two I knew even before Owen burst through the patio doors, holding the pee-stick triumphantly in the air, a wide grin on his face I just knew I stood up and we gripped each other tightly   ‘This moment,’ he said, to me, to the cluster of cells in my uterus, ‘this moment we will remember forever’   Owen knelt to kiss my stomach and when he raised his face to me there was a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before It may have been wonder Or excitement Or something else     Week 12   When I arrived home after work, Owen was in the narrow galley kitchen rinsing salad with filtered water and blackening two tuna steaks on a griddle   ‘To get rid of the bugs,’ he said, as he served up pieces of desiccated fish with a side of damp lettuce I was finally hungry again and could have murdered a rare steak with blue cheese sauce, but I guessed Owen would rather I went hungry than let me eat bloodied meat and unpasteurised cheese He poured a glass of wine and a glass of milk and we sat down at the small table   ‘I checked the book today,’ he said He’d spent the last few weeks reading What To Expect When You’re Expecting and regaling me with facts about the developments in my womb He

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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Issue No. 5

Choose Your Own Formalism

David Auerbach

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Issue No. 5

1. ALL SQUARES RESIDE IN THE HUMAN BREAST In 2007 game designer and Second Life CEO Rod Humble wrote...

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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...

fiction

Issue No. 17

Boom Boom

Clemens Meyer

TR. Katy Derbyshire

fiction

Issue No. 17

You’re flat on your back on the street. And you thought the nineties were over.   And they nearly...

 

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