Explorers of the abyss

“What are you writing about now?” Enrique Vila-Matas was asked one afternoon. After completing his last novel Doctor Pasavento, the writer felt that he had reached the end of a journey and that an abyss was looming before him. “I’m writing the title of a book”, he replied. That title was Exploradores del abismo. Inspired by that suggestive title is a book of stories about a series of protagonists on a precipice, people who live their lives on the edge and make that situation an object of their reflections. These are optimistic people, normal folk who adopt the position of explorer as they survey the horizon, imagining what could lie beyond the limits of our vision. The ‘explorers’ are not especially contemporary people, disdaining the current fashion for existential angst and instead opting for an old-fashioned, uninhibited relationship with the inevitability of the emptiness that lies before them. In reality, the stories in this volume look for connections within the abyss: paths crossed by a silhouette of a tightrope walker that ties together this volume. A book that marks the return of Enrique Vila-Matas to the form of the short story, but also to the genre of the unclassifiable tale.