The Book of All Loves by Agustín Fernández Mallo

In the wake of the Great Blackout, faced with the near-extinction of humanity, a pair of lovers speak to each other. They parse, with precision, with familiarity, the endless aspects of their love. Out of their dialogues, piece by piece, a composite image of love takes form, one that moves outwards beyond the realm of relationships and into metaphysics, geology, linguistics, AI.

Years previously, a writer and her husband, a Latin professor, stay in Venice while she works on a text. As they roam the city, strange occurrences accumulate, signalling that the world around them is heading towards a point of no return.

Blending fiction and essay, poetry and philosophy, Agustín Fernández Mallo’s The Book of All Loves is a startling, expansive work of imaginative agility, one that renders love unfamiliar so as to renew it, and makes the case for hope in the midst of a disintegrating present.

REVIEWS

"Here, a sense of menace and a kind of melancholy tension are beautifully realised in Mallo’s 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 book’s 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 you’ll find extraordinary things there. Borges is one of them, Bolaño another. Agustín Fernández Mallo has become one, too."― Chris Power, author of A Lonely Man

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback with French flaps
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
ISBN:  978-1804270790
Pages: 192