In Kassel, there is no logic

"...More distinctive and timely than ever, it draws inspiration from documenta, the legendary contemporary art exhibition, and presents us with a unique novel that reveals the true purpose of writing."

"...It serves to remind us that art, like the human mind, is indestructible, and that contemporary art is precisely what makes things happen to us, the one that shows us that the world, through its mirrors and its noises and its extremes and its persistent romanticism, seems ‘driven by an invisible force’."

"...In his own unique way, a product of his genius, he manages to refer to Documenta without making his true thoughts on it clear to the reader, managing to evoke a simultaneous sense of admiration, sarcasm, amusement and annoyance towards one of the most renowned artistic events, whilst not hesitating to undermine and satirise himself. His sharp eye, his talent for satire, his knowledge, but above all his love of literature are all present in this novel. The magical transformation of an event in his life into literature."

"...A book – a study of art and creation.[...] A literary game by one of the greatest writers of our time."

"...The Catalan master operates on a completely different wavelength. With corrosive irony and extreme self-mockery, he (counter)proposes crucial questions and a discussion interspersed with comic episodes, in which he separates the wheat from the chaff of the avant-garde."

"...What Vila-Matas has managed to achieve in this novel is to give us an adventurous novel of mixed ideas concerning art and its interaction with literature. Naturally, with the ultimate aim of highlighting literature […] as the most fundamental element of everyday life and of art in general."

"...Here, Vila-Matas aptly, multilayeredly and multifacetedly addresses the theme of the creator’s relationship with society, reflecting on the concept of contemporary art and its significance today, his own role as a writer and a political animal – in Aristotle’s terms – and how, through his mission, he becomes a driving force for the generation of thought. Vila-Matas, in his usual manner and with a strategy reminiscent of a chessboard, constructs a novel that is idiosyncratic yet oriented towards the dialogue between art and its audience."

"...Intelligence gushes forth, not its display but intelligence itself as a state of being. You immediately realise that you are encountering something new that you have never read before, something original and true. It reminds me – drawing a parallel with the Greek literary landscape – of Seferis’s solid, robust and academic style of expression, and at the same time of Alexandros Schinas’s experimental approach in *Report on Cases*. The novel by the Spaniard Enrique Vila-Matas resembles a piece of advice the author offers his readers, whilst at the same time putting it into practice: ‘write what happens to you’."

Nanna Papanikolaou, translator of Enrique Vila-Matas’s book *In Kassel There Is No Logic*, speaks to “The First Library” and reveals two interesting facts about the book’s publication.

"...For Vila-Matas, Kassel becomes a place where logic truly does not exist, and this turns out to be a fortunate circumstance. Because ultimately, he finds logic in art."

"...In reality, what Vila-Matas tells us through his book is that the only way to give meaning to one’s existence in the world, as well as to the world itself, is to stage one’s life as art and to experience art as life, without the slightest concern for the effectiveness of such an endeavour."

"...it reads both as a humorous essay on the nature of creativity, writing and art, and as a penetrating and (self-)sarcastic glimpse through the keyhole into the art world."

"...His novel *There Is No Logic in Kassel* confirms his view that literature itself can be the subject of fiction if the author knows the techniques of storytelling and utilises them in his own ingenious way. Vila-Matas has written a novel of ideas using noir techniques to keep the reader’s interest undiminished."

"...Enrique Vila-Matas gave me a delightful stay; he freed me from my rigidities and hesitations with his brilliantly crafted fictional account of his participation in Documenta. What Enrique Vila-Matas taught me about Documenta, no one else has taught me, in underground, ground-floor, heart-rending compositions, analyses and philosophical essays, in discussions about the avant-garde and its absence, in arguments about what precedes and what follows our era."

"...this book is truly a work of genius, by an author who has a way of enchanting you because he knows full well that ‘no one writes to entertain others, even though literature is entertaining, nor to tell stories, even though it contains a whole host of stories. One writes to throw the reader off balance. To overwhelm them, charm them, enslave them. To enter their mind and remain there. To shock them, conquer them.”

"...The author narrates, reflects on and satirises the postmodern state of contemporary art, as it unfolds at the renowned Documenta contemporary art exhibition in Kassel, Germany."

"...Whatever is happening, what unfolds here is a novel all of its own, where absolutely nothing seems to be happening, and the author simply observes and comments, but in essence (it seems) a great deal is happening, from the art of the documentarians to his own thoughts. Cassel’s Vila-Matas is simultaneously writing the diary of a strange agreement and an essay on the contemporary existence of art. When he gets stuck, he embarks on endless walks, either to discover hidden messages or to chat with his companions of the moment about things one can only express whilst walking, and, as usual, he attempts to find himself within the novels of others, as here, a fine hour, in Robert Walser’s The Walk."