Stylistically and thematically The Book of All Loves is daringly hybrid, swimming in and out of streams of consciousness, monologue and dialogue, and studded throughout with imagined dictionary-style entries classifying love in its countless guises. But instead of érs and agįp, Mallo warps, fractures and expands the concepts of his subject into increasingly esoteric forms. Ever attentive to the manipulation of language, Bunsteads translation is highly impressive, keeping smooth pace with the author in his fits of poetry and moments of philosophical contemplation. Agustķn Fernįndez Mallos rapturous, postapocalyptic study of love is, at its core, a study of us all.
Laura Garmeson, Times Literary Supplement Here, a sense of menace and a kind of melancholy tension are beautifully realised in Mallos brooding prose.
Michael Cronin, Irish Times The novel covers an enormous range of subjects linguistics, metaphysics, geology, nature, poetry, artificial intelligence, deep time, philosophy with a quality of thought that propels the reader to the books surprising conclusion. The Book of All Loves is a sheer pleasure, a text that reminded our committee why we read, and what wonderful discoveries are available to us in the trade of bookselling.
2024 Cercador Prize jury There are certain writers whose work you turn to knowing youll find extraordinary things there. Borges is one of them, Bolańo another. Agustķn Fernįndez Mallo has become one, too.
Chris Power, author of A Lonely Man A protean taxonomy of love whose shape veers between three modes, that of commonplace book, gendered dialogue and metafiction. Agustķn Fernįndez Mallo finds not one but many envelopes to contain the cosmos.
Jesse Ball, author of Autoportrait The Book of All Loves defies definition. The prose gallops on from one shining brilliance to the next, both disarmingly playful and devastating. Gorgeous, melancholic, mysterious it is a book to be read again, many times.
Claire Oshetsky, author of Chouette In his Book of All Loves, Fernįndez Mallo offers us an encyclopaedia of loves, each one sounding as if for the first time as a pure tone, from an infinite spectrum of tones. Here is a book unlike any other, a book that recreates and regenerates love, even as it asks us whether it is strong enough to hold.
Amy Arnold, author of Lori & Joe Mallo makes a hopeful and resounding claim: human love can even ritualise rubbish.
Tom Greany, Oxford Review of Books The Book of All Loves is a deeply poetic novel ... Fernįndez Mallo reflects on the present through the past, and projects us into a future where the conditions of the self, the environment, relationships and the body are all called into question.
El Mundo Reading Agustķn Fernįndez Mallo is the closest thing in literature to putting on a VR headset.'
La Vanguardia The Book of All Loves is at once an essay, an ode and a gospel, where two lovers become the link between one world ending and another being born, and using deep geological time to explain why some people stay with us our whole lives.
ABC Espańa The most original and powerful author of his generation in Spain.
Mathias Enard, author of The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild One of the best writers in Spanish, with an absolutely unique style and fictional world.
Jorge Carrión, New York Times in Spanish A strange and original sensibility at work one that combines a deep commitment to the possibilities of art with a gonzo spirit and a complete absence of pretention.
Christopher Beha, Harpers [ A] richly layered work that coheres into a deep and profound whole.
Joshua Rees, Buzz
