Attila
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Last Words on Earth—an reimagining of Roberto Bolaño’s life—comes a book articulating the final years of Aliocha Coll, one of Spain’s most innovative writers as he completes his masterpiece, Attila (also available from Open Letter Books).
Living alone in Paris, estranged from his family, suffering from heartbreak and possibly madness, Alioscha Coll works with saintly intensity on what will be his final manuscript: Attila. Once the final words have been written, he vows to end his life, convinced that his existence will lose all purpose.
Told through the viewpoint of a literary critic and journalist, Attila expands Javier Serena’s investigation into artists who remained dedicated to their art, to their aesthetic vision in the face of complete dismissal by the publishing world and reading public. In the case of Last Words on Earth and Ricardo Funes (the stand in for Bolaño in that novel), things work out and he briefly becomes the star of the literary world—could the same happen for Alioscha Coll?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The devastating latest from Serena (Last Days on Earth) centers on an uncompromising 40-something Catalan writer named Alioscha (a thinly veiled Aliocha Coll) in his final years. Alioscha and his painter wife, Élene, leave Barcelona for Paris, where Alioscha applies himself with "monastic discipline" to his novel Attila, which is made up of a "long and chaotic discourse of impossible verses and nonsensical paragraphs." The unnamed narrator, a journalist friend of Alioscha's, reveals early on that Alioscha will complete Attila just days before his suicide. Gradually, Alioscha's work consumes him, and he becomes a "stranger among the living," trapped in his own "asphyxiating labyrinth." Élene leaves him in the middle of the night, and his wealthy father, who supports him financially and wants him to return to Spain, cuts him off. To make ends meet, Alioscha collects garbage and works at a nursing home on the outskirts of the city. As he descends further into squalor and madness, his cousin Carlos and the narrator travel regularly from Spain to Paris to offer him company and, they hope, salvation. This clear-eyed portrait sheds welcome light on Coll and his challenging masterpiece. It's a gut-wrenching reckoning with the pain and glory of making art.
