Attila (Coll)

April 1, 2025
novel | pb | 200 pgs.
5.5" x 8.5" 
978-1-960385-37-6

"A brilliant and extraordinary man, very gifted from childhood, and with an extraordinary vocation. He chose the path of revolutionizing the word, with books that were excessively avant-garde for the ordinary reader, and represented a break away from commonplace language."—Carmen Balcells

"My life will not make any sense when Attila is finished," declared Aliocha Coll about his mesmerizing final novel. In this groundbreaking "untranslatable" work, he channels Joycean experimentalism to explore the fragility of empires, the future of the city, and the weight of legacy.

Attila the Hun, reimagined as a visionary leader, contemplates the fate of his people at the gates of Rome. His son, Quijote, is caught between empires and ideals, forced to choose between his father's vision of a Hunnic utopia and the decaying allure of Roman civilization. As Rome burns, Quijote journeys through both real and surreal landscapes, encountering psychedelic visions, mystical revelations, and existential dilemmas.

Quijote's journey blurs the lines between past and future, uniting Biblical, Classical, and Buddhist traditions while moving between planes of existence. Attila is an intricate and elusive masterpiece from the explosive and disorienting imagination of Aliocha Coll, where characters from myth and history intermingle in a stunning labyrinth of allegory and metaphor.

Translated from the Spanish by Katie Whittemore

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About the Author:

The pseudonym of Javier Coll Mata (Madrid, May 6, 1948–Paris, November 15, 1990), Aliocha Coll was a Spanish writer and translator raised in Barcelona who spent several years of his adult life in Paris, where he committed suicide after completing Attila. He is the subject of "Everything Bad Comes Back" by Javier Marías, and believed in Finnegans Wake as the "starting point" for contemporary literature. In addition to Attila, he wrote a couple novels, a play, and several essays, but the majority his work was either published posthumously or remains unpublished, despite Spanish super agent Carmen Balcells backing him throughout her life as the future of Spanish literature.

About the Translator:

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.

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Praise for Javier Serena:

“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

“[Atila] 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

“This is a story told by three different points of view that moves and intrigues us and that places Javier Serena among the most challenging and talented young Spanish narrators of our country.”—Ben Clark, Nou Diari

“More than a novel about Roberto Bolaño, Last Words on Earth is a story about passion, sacrifice, and the uncompromising pursuit of literature. Not simply for fans of the writer, but anyone touched by the power of books and writing.”
—Mark Haber, author of Lesser Ruins