El mal de Montano

Brazil / Cosac Naify; Bulgaria / Stigmati; France / Bourgois / Pocket, Titres; Germany / Nagel & Kimche; Greece / Kastaniotis; Italy / Feltrinelli;  The Netherlands / De Bezige Bij; Macedonia / ILI-ILI Publishing; Portugal / Teorema; Slovakia / Belimex; Sweden / Tranan; UK / Harvill Secker; USA /  New Directions

-HERRALDE PRIZE

-PRIX MÉDICIS, 2003

-NATIONAL CRITICS PRIZE

-CRITICS CIRCLE PRIZE, Chile

-Ennio Flaiano International Prize for Narrative.

-Shortlisted for the first Warwick Prize 2009

«A splendid novel.» Fernando Savater, El País

«Portentous lucidity, ironic distance and an enviable sense of humour.» J.M. Pozuelo Yvancos, ABC

«An excellent writer whose originality separates him from any of the other attempts of the last forty years.» Ricardo Senabre, El Mundo

«El mal de Montano  is a daring, provocative, extraordinary novel.» J.A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia

«I have become a fanatic of Vila-Matas, that profound yet funny Barcelonian, and my only regret is not having enough time to read all of his books.» Maurice Nadeau, La Quinzaine Littéraire

(Montano’s Malady) Between a private diary and a novel, a sentimental journey, autofiction and essay, El mal de Montano proposes the triumph of literature, as if it is the only means of glimpsing the idea of survival or a possibility of a new sense coming. A narrator, who signs his books using the maternal name of Rosario Girondo, writes a personal diary and a timid dictionary of his life, and his Montano’s malady is so strong… He is so sick with literature that the initial fiction (the creation of a character obsessed with the future of literature and dedicated to deciphering the art of the personal diaries of his favourite writers) ends up becoming reality when the author decides to become flesh and blood in the literature itself; incarnate himself in it, turn himself into the memory of the universal library, and form part of a secret society of plotters against the enemy of literature.