”A Catalan writer who is arguably Spain’s most significant contemporary literary figure”.  Joanna Kavenna. The New Yorker, sept 2012

“Enrique Vila-Matas is a great writer, and his new book Dublinesque is what great readers have been searching for.” The Coffin Factory

“As in all his novels, Vila-Matas grapples with the freedom of the individual, a freedom inevitably compromised by tragedy and failure but also graced by moments of alleviation, even happiness. By lifting the heavy weight of the past, by setting irony against dogmatism and loyalty, Vila-Matas allows his characters, and us, to contemplate the future.” (The New Yorker)

“In Dublinesque Vila-Matas has concluded the groundwork for a great, mature literature, the way-out-through-negation that began in his Bartleby & Co. Marco Roth wrote, “A contemporary novel that could dramatize the life of one heroic reading consciousness or even one reader’s struggle between heroic reading and the impulses tapped by consumerism might just be the sort of novel to save us from our own savage torpor.” The Vila-Matas quartet, from Bartleby & Co. to Dublinesque, is the very catalyst he imagines — the advance of heroic reading in a transitional period where market values slip from print to digital and underscore certain winners and losers, either publicists or dinosaur literary publishers. But for all his buildup in the previous three novels, Vila-Matas still has not written the “novel of the future” — this quartet is only a preliminary primer that points to something else, for someone else’s use. Shelley wrote, “Familiar acts are beautiful through love” — a line that reads cliché unless you invest it endearingly after conceding it’s cliché. Vila-Matas shows us that, with everything familiar, our way out is a confrontation to the tradition, concurrently in love and hate, yes and no, when the apocalypse is never new and always now” (Los Angeles Review Books 31.08.2012)

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8 diciembre 2012

(The Independent (a través de Boyd Tonkin) elige DUBLINESQUE entre los libros del año.

_____________Boyd Tonkin________________________________________

“Enrique Vila-Matas, one of Spain’s most distinguished novelists, turns this slight tale into a touching account of facing down mortality with a passion and an obsession for literature” (Rachel Nolan, New York Times, 31,08.2012)

“Enrique Vila-Matas is a consistently rich and challenging contemporary Spanish-language novelist. Revered in France, a mentor to Bolaño and his Iberoamerican brood, his prose is a model of world literature”(Will. H. Corral World Literatura Today, November 2012)

“By lifting the heavy weight of the past, by setting irony against dogmatism and rigidity, Vila-Matas allows his characters, and us, to contemplate the future.”

— The New Yorker on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

“The accent of Vila-Matas’s project falls on an accomplished romanticism conscious of its historicity, an artist-worship taken to maturity that concurrently absents and introduces itself into the work at every moment.”

— Los Angeles Review of Books on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

“A touching account of facing down mortality with a passion and an obsession for literature.”

— The New York Times Book Review on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

“It is Vila-Matas’ style of writing that distinguishes him as one of the best living authors today, and what makes Dublinesque a must read book.”

— The Coffin Factory on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

“The Spanish novelist is a master of that problematic enterprise of literature: the death-defying highwire act of telling the truth through lies, of invoking reality through fiction.”

— The Millions on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

“Both shocking and gratifying for the reader…Dublinesque offers the reader layer upon layer of secrets that only she is privy to, and the effect is thrilling. ”

— Full Stop on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

“The novel is about the death of the author in more senses than one. Funerals make a kind of art out of death, and so does Dublinesque”

— London Review of Books on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

“From his latest raid into the literary jungle Vila-Matas has brought home a fine specimen of that most endangered of intellectual species, the literary publisher. ”

— The Guardian on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

“His writing is filled with withdrawal and disappearance, and so it is with Dublinesque, one of the most pleasurable and joyous novels of the year. ”

— The Independent on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

“Hugely entertaining, witty and informed, a pleasure to read. ”

— The Irish Times on Enrique Vila-Matas‘s Dublinesque

                                                             THE ENGLISH JUMP

«It’s the edge of eternity. Let’s stay right here forever». (Aire de Dylan… Enrique Vila-Matas)