LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
Enrique Vila-Matas's new novel is perhaps his greatest: 'playful and funny and among the best Spanish novelists' Colm Toibin
Sixty-something Mac is not writing a novel. He is writing a diary, which no one will ever read. His wife, Carmen, thinks he is wasting his time. But Mac persists, diligently recording his daily walks through the neighbourhood during the hottest summer Barcelona has seen in over a century. But soon he notices that life is exhibiting strange literary overtones, and in the sweltering heat, he becomes ever more immersed in literature - a literature haunted by death but alive with the sheer pleasure of writing.
Intricate, erudite and practically fizzing on the page, Mac and His Problem is a masterpiece of metafiction and a testament to the power and playfulness of great literature.
'So deeply comical on the one hand, and so deeply poignant on the other, that you just have to give yourself up to it because you're in the hands of a master' Paul Auster
'[Vila-Matas] chooses humour in a way that allows him to have big ideas while relentlessly making fun of them' Sunday Telegraph
Rezensionen / Stimmen
In this lively and inquisitive work of metafiction, a story about stories, Vila-Matas is as deliberate as he is playful, and induces the not altogether unpleasant sensation of getting lost ever deeper in a literary hall of mirrors -- Alastair Mabbott * Herald * A writer who has no equal in the contemporary landscape of the Spanish novel -- Roberto Bolano Arguably Spain's most significant contemporary figure * New Yorker * The tremendously touching characters in Enrique Vila-Matas's novels who stumble from one place to the next, not really sure where they are going, but always on a quest are so deeply comical on the one hand, and so deeply poignant on the other, that you just have to give yourself up to it because you're in the hands of a master. -- Paul Auster Playful and funny and among the best Spanish novelists -- Colm Toibin Vila-Matas's bouncy prose is the highlight of this lively ride through a writer's mind. * Publishers Weekly * A metafictional paean to storytelling... Diary, essay, thriller, conspiracy theory, posthumous memoir, novel-Vila-Matas uses all the materials to construct his latest metafictional fun house. * Kirkus Reviews * [Vila-Matas] chooses humour in a way that allows him to have big ideas while relentlessly making fun of them * Sunday Telegraph * Like W.G. Sebald, Geoff Dyer and, more recently, writers such as Rachel Cusk, Teju Cole and Ben Lerner, Vila-Matas manages to create a productive uncertainty in the reader's mind through his disorientating effects... One of the distinct pleasures of Vila-Matas' books is that they function as little libraries stuffed with other authors' works * Literary Review *
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ISBN-13
978-1-4735-5405-4 (9781473554054)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Enrique Vila-Matas is widely considered to be one of Spain's most important contemporary novelists. His work has been translated into 36 languages and has won numerous international literary prizes, including the Herralde Prize, the Prix Medicis etranger and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. Vila-Matas' books have been longlisted (Montano) and shortlisted (Dublinesque) for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and Never Any End to Paris was a finalist for the US Best Translated Book Award. Mac & His Problem was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. Sophie Hughes is the translator of over twenty novels by authors such as Fernanda Melchor, Alia Trabucco Zeran and Enrique Vila-Matas. She has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. In 2021, she was awarded the Queen Sofia Translation Prize.
