Enrique Vila-Matas

Enrique Vila-Matas (born 31 March 1948 in Barcelona) is a Spanish writer.

Vila-Matas has written several award-winning books that mix genres and has been branded as one of the most original and prominent writers in the Spanish language.

He is a founding Knight of the Order of Finnegans, a group which meets in Dublin every year on 16 June to honour James Joyce and his novel Ulysses.

Biography Enrique Vila-Matas was born in Barcelona in 1948 to Enrique, who worked in the real-estate business, and Tayo Vila-Mata. When he was twelve, he began writing and later studied law and journalism.

In 1971, he did his military service in Melilla, where in the back room of a military-supplies store, he wrote his first novel, Mujer en el espejo contemplando el paisaje. On his return to Barcelona, he worked as a film critic for the magazines Bocaccio and Destino.

Literary career Vila-Matas published his first novel, written as a single uninterrupted sentence, in 1973. While living in Paris he wrote his second novel, La asesina ilustrada. His third and fourth books, Al sur de los párpados and Nunca voy al cine, appeared in 1980 and 1982. With the publication of his book Historia abreviada de la literatura portátil in 1985, Vila-Matas began to be recognised.

Literary style Vila-Matas' books mixes different genres and typically blurs the boundaries between essay and fiction in a style that the author himself has defined as "narrated thought". Metafiction, intertextuality, humour, wit, irony and autobiographical self-reflection are integral parts of his writing that has been described as "an intense and witty textual delirium that has made him one of the most original and celebrated writers in the Spanish language." In 2015, he won the FIL Literary Award in Romance Languages valued at $150,000. In 2016, he received the National Award of Catalonia.

He is a founding member of the Order of Finnegans, which takes its name from a pub in Dalkey, Ireland, although there are those who believe it also comes from James Joyce's last novel, Finnegans Wake. The knights of the Order of Finnegans must venerate James Joyce's novel Ulysses and, if possible, attend Bloomsday, June 16, each year in Dublin on the sixteenth of June. This is a long day that culminates, at dusk, at the Martello tower in Sandycove (where the novel begins) with participants reading sections from Ulysses and then walking to Finnegan's pub in the neighbouring village of Dalkey. The other four founding members are Eduardo Lago, Jordi Soler, Antonio Soler and Malcolm Otero Barral.

His most recent novel is Montevideo, a metafiction work which reflects on writing and interconnected hotel rooms, such as one in Montevideo at Cervantes hotel that has been previously mentioned in the two short stories by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Julio Cortázar La puerta condenada.

His work has so far been translated into thirty languages, including French, English, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Greek, Serbian, Swedish, Dutch, Hungarian, Hebrew, Turkish, Norwegian, Romanian, Polish, Korean, Catalan, Slovenian, Czech, Bulgarian, Finnish, Danish, Lithuanian, Slovak, Mandarin, Portuguese and Croatian.

Of his novel Dublinesque, Jacqueline McCarrick of The Times Literary Supplement wrote "...Vila-Matas has created a masterpiece".