Alvaro Enrigue

The well-known inspiration for 'Ulysses' is made clear by the title itself: Joyce's novel is based on Homer's 'Odyssey', under the ever-fascinating premise that all of Odysseus' extraordinary adventures can be experienced by a modern man in a single day, provided that the writing consists of his mental activity.

Walter Benjamin used to think that languages expand their register thanks to translation, because translation forces ways of using words and structures that were alien to the original speaker of the target language.

I don't write historical novels but novels that wonder, 'And what if it happened in this way and not in this other one?'

Fidel Castro's most scandalous show trial was not mounted against a political figure but against a writer: Heberto Padilla. In 1971, after 38 days of detention, Mr. Padilla was forced to 'confess' at the Cuban writers' union to the charges of 'subversive activities.'

I read everything from comics to magazines to fiction - I learned to read in English, years before being able to speak a word of it, by reading 'National Geographic.'

In Mexico, I think I'm considered conservative. Not politically - in terms of form and experimentation.

Caravaggio was a tormented, defiant, bisexual, angry young man - a maestro who looked nothing like a maestro.

I'm always reading a novel. If it's good, I remember why I love my job.

My definition of freedom is still ruled by the reluctance to live a conventional life, from Emilio Salgari's pirates.

New York offers a bubble out of the literary life that is very useful. We have more time for the children, for the cooking.

In 'Dublinesque', Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas inverts the terms of Joyce's 'Ulysses' and tells the story of a man who, after living a hyperkinetic life like those of Odysseus and Leopold Bloom, resolves to never leave his room again and to reduce his mental activity to a minimum.

History is like Santa Claus: a language construction. We have some registers about the existence of Santa and history - the presents under the tree, the archives - but none have really seen them.