Never Any End to Paris

Description

Trying to be Ernest Hemingway is never easy. After reading A Moveable Feast, aspiring novelist Enrique Vila-Matas moves to Paris to be closer to his literary idol, Ernest Hemingway. Surrounded by the writers, artists and eccentrics of '70s Parisian cafe culture, he dresses in black, buys two pairs of reading glasses, and smokes a pipe like Sartre. Now, in later life, he reflects on his youth while giving a three-day lecture on irony. And he's still convinced he looks like Hemingway. Never Any End to Paris is a hilarious, playful novel about literature and the art of writing, and how life never quite goes to plan.

Enrique Vila-Matas is widely considered to be one of Spain's most important contemporary novelists. His work has been translated into 36 languages and has won numerous international literary prizes, including the Herralde Prize, the Prix Medicis etranger and the Premio R mulo Gallegos. Vila-Matas' books have been longlisted (Montano) and shortlisted (Dublinesque) for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and Never Any End to Paris was a finalist for the US Best Translated Book Award. Mac & His Problem was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020.

A virtuoso balletic pas de deux of memory and imagination... There is something reminiscent in the fictional young Vila-Matas of Woody Allen... Not only does this novel glitter with sharp ideas and observations, it may just be the best book I've ever read about Paris. * TLS * Utterly compelling...breathtakingly accomplished... I was left satisfied, yet somehow wishing this captivating raconteur had continued indefinitely * Literary Review * By the end of it I was fully seduced by its self-portrait of the artist as a young writer... This wonderful book only reconfirms the never-ending-ness of Paris * Independent * Vila-Matas's touch is light and whimsical, while his allusions encompass a rogue's gallery of world literature * The Economist * One of Spain's most inventive and enjoyable novelists * Irish Examiner *