Manuel Vilas

The extravagant adventures of a group of characters chosen for immortality.

“Let me remind you that men and women used to die—that is, they disappeared from reality after living only a few years, insignificant amounts of time.”

Year 22,011. The discovery of a manuscript—The Immortals—in the Shakespeare Galaxy arouses both the curiosity and the outrage of the scholars who inhabit that distant world: perfect beings, descendants of humankind, but immortal. As the Shakespearians decipher the text, their conviction begins to crumble—that humans once lived through a kind of evolutionary winter, plagued by poverty, disease, and death.

But what could the manuscript contain that would justify its immediate destruction?

The Immortals recounts the extravagant adventures of several characters chosen for eternal life: Manuel Vilas, attending a poetry conference on the Moon in the year 2040; Ponti (short for Pontiff, in reference to Pope John Paul II), who travels with Mother T (Mother Teresa of Calcutta); Pablo and Vin (Picasso and Van Gogh); Saavedra, the protagonist—a vital, many-sided being who harbors the immortality of none other than Miguel de Cervantes himself; and the unforgettable Corman Martínez, the last communist.

With a postmodern aesthetic where high culture is brought low, and where the comic and the tragic, the solemn and the pathetic, are inseparable, The Immortals builds—through imagination and humor—a defense against all the fears born of the human condition.

“Manuel Vilas is probably the most dangerous writer in Spain right now.” Javier Calvo, Quimera