Nocilla Experience

(Paperback)

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Description

Somewhere in Spain, Marc, an avid reader of the Philips Agricultural Guide, pegs mathematical formulas to clotheslines on the roof of an 8-storey building. In London, the artist Jodorkovski spends hours painting tiny vignettes on chewing gum stuck to the pavements. In Miami, Harold spends his days devouring every box of Corn Flakes with his ex-wife's birthday as its sell-by-date. Meanwhile, in Corcubion, Spain, Anton is working on an audacious theory about the shared properties of barnacles and hard disks.

These are some of the narrative strands that make up this arborescently structured novel, the second instalment in the Nocilla Trilogy, hailed as one of the most daring experiments in Spanish literature of recent years. Featuring walk-on parts for Julio Cortazar during the writing of Hopscotch and Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, and full of references to indie cinema, collage, conceptual art, practical architecture, the history of computers and the decadence of the novel, Nocilla Experience picks up where Nocilla Dream left off, presenting us with a hidden and exhilarating cartography of contemporary experience.

'Like having multiple browser windows open, and compulsively tabbing between them.' - Guardian

Reviews

'By juxtaposing fiction with non-fiction ... the author has created a hybrid genre that mirrors our networked lives, allowing us to inhabit its interstitial spaces. A physician as well as an artist, Fernandez Mallo can spot a mermaid's tail in a neutron monitor; estrange theorems into pure poetry.' --Andrew Gallix, Independent

'With this bitter-sweet, violently poetic dream, Agustn Fernndez Mallo establishes himself as the most original and powerful author of his generation in Spain.'- Mathias Enard, author of Zone

'The best novel I read in 2016. Thrillingly, incandescently brilliant.' -Stuart Evers, author of If This is Home

Author Bio

Agustin Fernandez Mallo was born in La Coruna in 1967, and is a qualified physicist. In 2000 he formulated a self-termed theory of 'post-poetry' which explores connections between art and science. His Nocilla Trilogy, published between 2006 and 2009, brought about an important shift in contemporary Spanish writing and paved the way for the birth of a new generation of authors, known as the 'Nocilla Generation'. His essay Postpoesia, hacia un nuevo paradigma was shortlisted for the Anagrama Essay Prize in 2009. In 2018 his long essay Teoria de la basura (cultura, apropriacionismo y complejidad) was published by Galaxia Gutenberg, and in the same year his latest novel, Trilogia de la guerra (forthcoming from Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2021 as The Things We've Seen), won the Biblioteca Breve Prize.