Whether he takes us to Paris, Dublin or Barcelona, under one or other of his multiple disguises, Enrique Vila-Matas never really deceives us: literature is each time the real character of his books. Montevideo, his new opus, is a little labyrinth of words and paper in which he questions, jumping without blinking from one book to another, the very idea of reality. Through a fascinating masked autobiographical drift and an investigation as false as it is delirious, the Spanish writer, through detours that take us through Paris, Reykjavik and Bogotá, finds like a pilgrim the hotel in the Uruguayan capital which is located at heart of a short story by Julio Cortázar (The condemned door) and tries to relive the plot. Turning his back a little on the audience – like Miles Davis -, an unrepentant player, Vila-Matas activates beneath the layers of fabrications an incessant crossover of digressions, self-deprecation and learned humor.
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