About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherOpen Letter

ISBN-101960385356

ISBN-139781960385352

eBay Product ID (ePID)8070931191

Product Key Features

Book TitleAttila

Number of Pages150 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2025

TopicLiterary

GenreFiction, Biography & Autobiography

AuthorJavier Serena

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.4 in

Item Weight5.3 Oz

Item Length8.5 in

Item Width5.5 in

Additional Product Features

Reviews" Attila is a book that opens the doors to a kind of narrative very unusual in our country. A novel about passion and negativity (so opposed at first sight), but very stimulating." --Enrique Vila-Matas "Spanish writer Serena debuts with a stunning portrait of aRoberto Bolaño-esque writer who strikes literary gold whilefacing a terminal lung disease. . . . This is a wonder."-- Publishers Weekly , starred review "Serena channels his observations about creativity into elegant sentences (via Whittemore's translation) that evokethe storm-clouded intensity of Bolaño's prose in books like 2666 . . . . A meditative tribute to perseverance and literaryintegrity."-- Kirkus Reviews " Last Words on Earth is a wistful, admirative novel inspiredby the life of Roberto Bolaño. . . . Serena's novel, at timessomber, at others exuberant, captures well the ambiguities,the inconsistencies, and the dualities of all lives, in a waythat's simultaneously both a lauding and a lament. LastWords on Earth slips behind the authorial façade, positing impermanence as the protagonist all must reckon withsooner or later."--Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books, " Attila is a book that opens the doors to a kind of narrative very unusual in our country. A novel about passion and negativity (so opposed at first sight), but very stimulating." --Enrique Vila-Matas "Spanish writer Serena debuts with a stunning portrait of aRoberto Bolaño-esque writer who strikes literary gold whilefacing a terminal lung disease. . . . This is a wonder."-- Publishers Weekly , starred review "Serena channels his observations about creativity into elegant sentences (via Whittemore's translation) that evokethe storm-clouded intensity of Bolaño's prose in books like 2666 . . . . A meditative tribute to perseverance and literaryintegrity."--Kirkus Reviews " Last Words on Earth is a wistful, admirative novel inspiredby the life of Roberto Bolaño. . . . Serena's novel, at timessomber, at others exuberant, captures well the ambiguities,the inconsistencies, and the dualities of all lives, in a waythat's simultaneously both a lauding and a lament. LastWords on Earth slips behind the authorial façade, positing impermanence as the protagonist all must reckon withsooner or later."--Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books

SynopsisFrom the author of Last Words on Earth --an reimagining of Roberto Bolaño's life--comes a book articulating the final years of Aliocha Coll, one of Spain's most innovative writers as he completes his masterpiece, Attila (also available from Open Letter Books). Living alone in Paris, estranged from his family, suffering from heartbreak and possibly madness, Alioscha Coll works with saintly intensity on what will be his final manuscript: Attila . Once the final words have been written, he vows to end his life, convinced that his existence will lose all purpose. Told through the viewpoint of a literary critic and journalist, Attila expands Javier Serena's investigation into artists who remained dedicated to their art, to their aesthetic vision in the face of complete dismissal by the publishing world and reading public. In the case of Last Words on Earth and Ricardo Funes (the stand in for Bolaño in that novel), things work out and he briefly becomes the star of the literary world--could the same happen for Alioscha Coll?