An author (a version of Vila-Matas himself) presents a short history of a secret society, the Shandies, who are obsessed with the concept of portable literature. The society is entirely imagined, but in this rollicking, intellectually playful book, its members include writers and artists like Marcel Duchamp, Aleister Crowley, Witold Gombrowicz, Federico Garcia Lorca, Man Ray, and Georgia O Keefe. The Shandies meet secretly in apartments, hotels, and cafes all over Europe to discuss what great literature really is: brief, not too serious, penetrating the depths of the mysterious. We witness...

An extraordinarily rich and powerful collection of seven, thematically linked stories from the acclaimed prize-winning author of The Sound of Things Falling 'The narrative escalates, the mystery deepens, and the scope of the story widens with each page ... Terrific' Khaled Hosseini, Books of the Year 'One of the most original new writers of Latin American literature' Mario Vargas Llosa A Colombian writer is witness to a murder which will mark him forever. A woman sits alone in her house, waiting for her husband to return, while he lies in another woman’s bed twenty kilometres away....