num_pages: 256
description: The narrator of Montano’s Malady is a writer named Jose who is so obsessed with literature that he finds it impossible to distinguish between real life and fictional reality. Part picaresque novel, part intimate diary, part memoir and philosophical musings, Enrique Vila-Matas has created a labyrinth in which writers as various as Cervantes, Sterne, Kafka, Musil, Bolano, Coetzee, and Sebald cross endlessly surprising paths. Trying to piece together his life of loss and pain, Jose leads the reader on an unsettling journey from European cities such as Nantes, Barcelona, Lisbon, Prague and Budapest to the Azores and the Chilean port of Valparaiso. Exquisitely witty and erudite, it confirms the opinion of Bernardo Atxaga that Vila-Matas is "the most important living Spanish writer."
language: English
title: Montano's Malady
titlecomplete: Montano's Malady
genres: Spanish Literature, Spain, 21st Century, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Roman, Latin American, Fiction, Books About Books
ratings_count: 1216
awards: awardedAt: 1230796800000
name: Warwick Prize for Writing
category: Shortlist, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Premio Herralde de Novela, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: BTBA Best Translated Book Award
category: Fiction shortlist, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
category: Longlist, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Prix Médicis Etranger, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Premio de la Crítica de Narrativa Castellana
publisher: New Directions