Montano's Malady

Shortlisted for the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing

A dazzlingly original exploration of literature's limits—and its necessity—Montano's Malady is Enrique Vila-Matas at his most mischievous, self-referential, and intellectually provocative.

Both the narrator of Montano's Malady, José, and his son, Montano, suffer from literary illnesses: Montano has writer's block and José can only experience the world as literature. The search for a "cure" leads José around a world that is constantly mediated by his thoughts about writers and literature—from Cervantes to Sternea and Kafka to Sebald, among countless other literary touchstones—as he blends fiction and essay, memoir and criticism, with dizzying brilliance.

A sequel of sorts to Bartleby & Co., Montano's Malady is both a love letter to literature and a lament for its diminished place in the modern world.