Vila-Matas novel explores literature's disappearance

Enrique Vila-Matas's novel "Le Mal de Montano" tells the story of writer Montano, who publishes a book about authors who have stopped writing. Through a late-20th-century diary, the narrator dissects Montano's obsessive relationship with literature. Vila-Matas defends literature as a dying art, citing 20th-century writers. The novel reflects on the diary as fiction and uses writers as models. Vila-Matas describes young writers as "seriously dangerous for respectable society" and questions the state of novel-writing, criticizing the proliferation of incompetent authors. The work culminates in a humorous labyrinthine fiction that addresses narrative form.