Because She Never Asked

About the Authors

Enrique Vila-Matas

“Enrique Vila-Matas has pioneered one of contemporary literature’s most interesting responses to the great Modernist writers.”

— The Paris Review

“Truth, fiction, history, memoir: these are always charmingly unstable categories in Vila-Matas’s writing.”

— Adam Thirwell, Times Literary Supplement

Enrique Vila-Matas was born in Barcelona in 1948. He studied law and journalism and in 1968 became a columnist for the magazine Film Frames. In 1970 he moved to Paris, renting an attic that was once rented by Marguerite Duras. He wrote about this experience in his novel Never Any End to Paris. Vila-Matas now lives in Barcelona and is one of Spain’s most highly regarded writers. His other New Directions books include Bartleby & Co., Montano’s Malady, Dublinesque, The Illogic of Kassel, and A Brief History of Portable Literature. He is a Knight of the Legion of Honor from France and has won many prizes, including the Rómulo Gallegos, the Prix Médicis, the Gregor von Rezzori International Prize, and most recently the Formentor Prize.

Valerie Miles, an editor, writer, translator, and professor, is the cofounding editor of the literary journal Granta in Spanish.