Montano's Malady

The narrator of Montano's Malady is a writer 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's novel is a labyrinth in which writers as various as Cervantes, Sterne, Kafka, Robert Musil, Roberto Bolano, J. M. Coetzee, and W. G. Sebald crisscross on endlessly surprising paths. Trying to piece together his life of loss and pain, Vila-Matas gives us a look into the mind of someone struck by "literature-sickness," who, trying to piece together his life of loss and pain, leads the reader on an unsettling journey both through European cities and the pages of world literature.