Mailing List


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

feature

Issue No. 13

Enrique Vila-Matas

TR. J. S. Tennant

feature

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’m a woman who’s been through terrible trauma I’m a woman whose first husband committed suicide, and whose second husband woke up out of a dead sleep, murdered her son, then killed himself   Kamal woke up, killed Mahmoud, and threw himself off the balcony   Kamal woke up, killed Mahmoud, and threw himself off the balcony Right from the start, from the beginning of the beginning, I never blamed Kamal for killing Mahmoud Kamal is forgiven: he had a whore for a mother and a bastard for a son, and it’s at those two, bastard and whore, that the fingers of blame should be pointed Not at Kamal, who was a victim the same way that I was a victim, and more so The whore mother I’d already killed, but the bastard son, who’d played the lead in Mahmoud’s death, what were we going to do about him?   Justice is that the killer dies, right? That’s what I know That’s what everybody knows, though they might deny it   Hours I spent on Facebook, hunting for Haytham Kamal, trying every play on the name I could think of, until I found him, and sent him a Friend request Then nights, scrolling down his wall I wanted to know what he was doing, where he went Where I could find him, so I could kill him, so I could make the world more beautiful, if only for a while Okay, I was telling myself, I’ll kill him, and I’ll turn myself in to the police, and I’ll go to prison   But as I was hunting Haytham on Facebook, I was also searching on Google, looking up Qanater Prison I wanted to be fully prepared I packed a few changes of clothes and a toothbrush Wasn’t leaving anything to chance   When they took me to prison – when I took myself to prison – I wanted to be ready   I’m a woman who’s taken what people aren’t made to take So what do I do? Die? Can you do that? Suffer all that trauma and just make up your mind to lie down and die? Well, yes, of course you can, but what I’m saying is: that’s not

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

feature

Issue No. 9

Enrique Vila-Matas

feature

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

poetry

March 2013

Fugitive

James Byrne

poetry

March 2013

I trace the stacked voices of shouters how they immingle fraternally on first hearing with the vaporous nick of...

Interview

May 2014

Interview with Eimear McBride

David Collard

Interview

May 2014

Eimear McBride’s first book, the radically experimental A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, was written when she was 27 and...

feature

February 2012

Stalker, Writer or Professor? Geoff Dyer's Zona and Genre

Rose McLaren

feature

February 2012

‘So what kind of a writer am I, reduced to writing a summary of a film?’ wonders Geoff Dyer...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required