Miquel de Palol

The novel that could have been co-written in perfect agreement by Franz Kafka, David Foster Wallace, Georges Perec and Groucho Marx.

With Boötes, Miquel de Palol culminates an ambitious, absolutely authentic literary project that is unparalleled in European literature. This dazzling novel follows the faltering steps of Artur, a technician hired to carry out repairs on the Archicenotaph on the Island of the Dead. It is a colossal, labyrinthine city-building, governed by a deranged bureaucracy, abstruse protocols and laws that are the fruit of the most hilarious improvisation or, perhaps, a perverse system that pushes its inhabitants to the very limits of sanity.

Bursting with delightful, devilish humour, Boötes unfolds before the reader as a highly intelligent allegory of power relations and the role of the individual under the yoke of a controlling organisation.

‘Bootes is frightening, due to the colossal magnitude of its scope and the bleak yet lucid diagnosis of the era of banal totalitarianism —perhaps it's a funeral sentence for the present time, with stunning poetic truth—, both for the density of thought and its impassioned eloquence. However, the excess, the risk of getting lost in disproportion, is no literary sin, and against the ravages of the trend of anorexic or bulimic narrative, de Palol enlarges everything to sculpt a monster as passionately deformed and fabulous as this inflamed and indomitable novel.’ Ponç Puigdevall, Quadern, El País 

‘In Bootes, Palol offers us his vision of the world in which we live and the outcome towards which this world is rapidly heading, with the clarity and sharpness we can expect from one of the most lucid and heartrending intellectuals we have.’ Blog La Acción Paralela 

‘Like Johann Sebastian Bach, Miquel de Palol does not imitate the universe but creates new universes with mathematical precision. (...) Miquel de Palol's writing is solid, sophisticated, profoundly original, and exciting. Bootes confirms that we are facing one of the best graphomaniacs in the world.’ Jaume C. Pons Alorda, Ara Llegim 

‘His particularly rich lexicon, neat syntax, overflowing yet well-reined imagination make this work a fascinating read. At a time when anemic literature is in vogue, Bootes is a story brimming with calories, and the reader would do well not to be intimidated and prepare for a magnificent, unusual, and satisfying feast.’ Joan Garí, Diari La Veu del País Valencià 

‘The grand adventure of Miquel de Palol.’ Julià Guillamón, La Vanguardia 

‘There is no novelist in the European continent who writes like Miquel de Palol. (...) Böotes, his latest cathedral translated into Spanish, reaffirms this: it's a challenging book, where the fantasy of an imagined world with perfectly clear rules hides behind it an attack on moralistic perspectives and the vain traditions of an increasingly automated world.’ The books of 2023, Letras Libres