Montevideo
Montevideo | Seix-Barral, 2022
What if life is what happens to us because of literature?
In the midst of a period of personal and literary transformation, the narrator of this novel starts to see signs on doors and in neighboring rooms, symbols that unite Paris with Cascais,
Montevideo, Rejkjavik, St. Gallen, and Bogota, silently bringing him back to writing, to the desire to transform into living pages certain experiences that cry out to be retold.
«Recently you’ve turned into one of those writers things happen to. Hopefully you’ll understand that your fate is to be a man who wants to rise up, be reborn, exist again. Let me repeat: rise up. Your fate is in your hands, the key to the new door.»
Montevideo is an authentic work of fiction, a major treatise on the ambiguity of the world as a characteristic of our time, a novel in which Vila-Matas is at his best, finding a way to give things new names at a time when it seems everything has been said––a feat all the more admirable because the nucleus of this work is nothing more nor less than the modernity of the novel itself.
«The best we’ve had from Vila-Matas in some time. There are many ways of reading, and if you don’t like a novel like Montevideo, that’s fine, but it’s highly probably that you are someone for whom literature in its freest, most unfettered form simply has no appeal.» Juan Marqués, El Mundo
«His most profound work, a treatise on style when a writer experiences something real… there’s one thing that never changes: that unique, almost magical capacity to move readers back and forth between astonishment and laughter.» Noelia RamÃrez, El PaÃs (Babelia)Â
«With the style of ParÃs no se acaba nunca and the metaliterary flourished of  Bartleby y compañÃa or El mal de Montano, he returns to give us the very best of himself (…) it’s a consolation that a writer like him, so feted, so wide-tanging, so universally applauded, should make the reader’s pleasure his principal objective while never once letting up on himself… A novel in the round, consummate and impeccable… a veritable feast, the best Vila-Matas in a long time.» Juan Marqués, El CulturalÂ
«The most ambitious novel by the always brilliant Vila-Matas.» Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia (Culturas)
«Each new book by Vila-Matas enters into dialogue with those before it, they are chapters of an infinite book the (re)elaboration of which the reader witnesses from the front row. Montevideo is a reflection on the novel, its transformation, and its rebirth.» Eva Cosculluela, ABC Cultural
«A book that sweeps you along with it, making your pencil tremble as you underline sentences on the contradictions of literature» Sergi Pà mies, La Vanguardia
«What we have here is a happy book that makes us happy» Nadal Suau, El Cultural, El Español
«Vila-Matas’s novel involves making art about art, literature about literature itself, to the point that it doesn’t leave the tiniest hole through which life itself can show through. Montevideo demonstrates that it’s still possible to bring a fictional creature to a higher degree of self-disappearance» Iñaki Ezkerra, El Correo
«Live to read. Write to save writing. And in walks Montevideo. Ambiguous and wonderful. It’s Vila-Matas» José MarÃa Pérez-Muelas, La Verdad
«Montevideo does not disappoint. Once again, readers discover a metaliterary ability that is surprisingly adept at leading them in whatever direction strikes their fancy,» Eric Gras, El Periódico Mediterráneo
«Besides being an ingenious and superlative writer, Vila-Matas is quite Spanish, with a dark sense of humor» Juan Bolea, El PeriódicoÂ
«Getting up, here, means getting out of bed, elevating the spirit, living, walking, writing. Long live this tremendous writer!» Manuel Peris, Levante
«Vila-Matas has written a novel whose raw material is faith in literature itself, and it’s contagious» Aloma RodrÃguez, Letras Libres
Brazil: Companhia das Letras; France: Actes Sud; English World: Deep Vellum; Germany: Wallstein; Greece: Ikaros; Italy: Feltrinelli; Norway: Solum; Portugal: Dom Quixote; Romania: Vellant
