Montano's Malady — Enrique Vila-Matas

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.