The Book of All Loves

‘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 érōs and agápē, Mallo warps, fractures and expands the concepts of his subject into increasingly esoteric forms…. Ever attentive to the manipulation of language, Bunstead’s translation is highly impressive, keeping smooth pace with the author in his fits of poetry and moments of philosophical contemplation…. Agustín Fernández Mallo’s 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 Mallo’s brooding prose.’
— Michael Cronin, Irish Times

‘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

‘A protean taxonomy of love whose shape veers between three modes, that of commonplace book, gendered dialogue and metafiction. Agustín Fernández 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, Fernández 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 ... Fernández 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 Agustín Fernández 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 España

‘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, Harper’s

‘[A] richly layered work that coheres into a deep and profound whole.’
— Joshua Rees, Buzz