From the author of  Last Words on Earth —an reimagining of Roberto Bolaño’s life—comes a book articulating the final years of Aliocha Coll, one of Spain’s most innovative writers as he completes his masterpiece,  Attila  (also available from Open Letter Books). Living alone in Paris, estranged from his family, suffering from heartbreak and possibly madness, Alioscha Coll works with saintly intensity on what will be his final manuscript:  Attila . Once the final words have been written, he vows to end his life, convinced that his existence will lose all purpose. Told through the viewpoint of a literary critic and journalist,  Attila  expands Javier Serena’s investigation into artists who remained dedicated to their art, to their aesthetic vision in the face of complete dismissal by the publishing world and reading public. In the case of  Last Words on Earth and Ricardo Funes (the stand in for Bolaño in that novel), things work out and he briefly becomes the star of the literary world—could the same happen for Alioscha Coll? “ Attila is a book that opens the doors to a kind of narrative very unusual in our country. A novel about passion and negativity (so opposed at first sight), but very stimulating.” —Enrique Vila-Matas “Spanish writer Serena debuts with a stunning portrait of a Roberto Bolaño–esque writer who strikes literary gold while facing a terminal lung disease. . . . This is a wonder.” — Publishers Weekly , starred review  “Serena channels his observations about creativity into elegant sentences (via Whittemore’s translation) that evoke the storm-clouded intensity of Bolaño’s prose in books like 2666 . . . . A meditative tribute to perseverance and literary integrity.” — Kirkus Reviews  “ Last Words on Earth is a wistful, admirative novel inspired by the life of Roberto Bolaño. . . . Serena's novel, at times somber, at others exuberant, captures well the ambiguities, the inconsistencies, and the dualities of all lives, in a way that's simultaneously both a lauding and a lament. Last Words on Earth slips behind the authorial façade, positing impermanence as the protagonist all must reckon with sooner or later.” —Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books Javier Serena was born in Pamplona, Spain in 1982. He has published Las torres de El Carpio , La estación baldía , Last Words on Earth , and Attila . He has stayed at writers residences with the Fundación Antonio Gala (Córdoba, Spain) and Les Rècollets (Paris, France). Katie Whittemore translates from the Spanish. Her translations include novels by Sara Mesa, Javier Serena, Aroa Moreno Durán, Lara Moreno, Nuria Labari, Katixa Agirre, Jon Bilbao, Juan Gómez Bárcena, Almudena Sánchez, Aliocha Coll, and Pilar Adón. She received an NEA Translation Fellowship in 2022 for Lara Moreno’s In Case We Lose Power , and has been a finalist for the Spain-USA Foundation Translation Prize and the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize, and longlisted for the National Translation Award. HE ALWAYS REACTED in the most eccentric possible way and so, finding himself alone and disoriented, ostracized and adrift in Paris, instead of giving up, Alioscha opted to become even more entrenched in his writing obsession. I confirmed this for myself mere hours after landing in Paris. Uneasy about his state of mind and fearing he’d gone mad after being abandoned by his female companion, I searched for him everywhere, seeking any sign that he was still alive, finally locating him at last in the expanses of the Parc de Belleville. The encounter was a chance one. I’d gone on a whim to that place with it exceptional panoramic views, trying to kill time, resigned to waiting until the next day to try and talk to him, but when I reached a cluster of graffitied wooden benches at the top of the hill and looked to my right, I found myself suddenly faced with my friend’s solemn and tragic silhouette, set against the Parisian rooftops. The figure he cut revealed that, over the past couple of weeks, he’d only sunk deeper into the delirious swamp in which he already flailed. He looked like a soloist seized by a musical fever, moving his lips to a melody only he could hear, his hair whipped about by the wind and his body in the throes of a strange vibration, so abstracted and brooding that he seemed entirely indifferent to his surroundings, wholly focused on reading from a piece of paper he held inches from his face. Only when I got closer, when I could finally hear the absurd litany he was muttering, hand clenched, resembling a claw, did I realize without surprise that, there in that secluded spot, I was witnessing a kind of theatrical rehearsal: Alioscha slowly and deliberately reciting the most recent chapter of Attila , the novel he had been working on for years and whose long and chaotic discourse of impossible verses and nonsensical paragraphs he would finish just days before killing himself.             But it would take until October fore Alioscha to finish his book