A marvelous novel by one of Spain's most important contemporary authors, in which a clerk in a Barcelona office takes us on a romping tour of world literature.

In Bartleby & Co., an enormously enjoyable novel, Enrique Vila-Matas tackles the theme of silence in literature: the writers and non-writers who, like the scrivener Bartleby of the Herman Melville story, in answer to any question or demand, replies: "I would prefer not to." Addressing such "artists of refusal" as Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Duchamp, Herman Melville, and J. D. Salinger, Bartleby & Co. could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), Bartleby embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, Bartleby is utterly engaging, a work of profound and philosophical beauty.

恩裏剋•比拉-馬塔斯（Enrique Vila-Matas）是西班牙目前最重要的作傢。目前已經齣版瞭近三十部著作，體裁包括短篇、小說、隨筆和論文集。2000年之前，他的文學聲譽主要局限於西語世界、法國、意大利、葡萄牙和巴西等地。但隨著《巴托比癥候群》的成功，比拉-馬塔斯逐漸被其他語言國傢的讀者接納，影響力迅速擴大，他的作品已被翻譯十餘種語言在全球發行，並被媒體看作近年來諾貝爾文學奬的又一熱門人選。

2013年，法國重要的文學期刊《文學雜誌》將比拉-馬塔斯與諾貝爾奬獲得者莫言、愛麗斯•門羅、帕慕剋等諾貝爾文學奬得主一起並列為當今最具影響力的作傢之一。

比拉-馬塔斯還和波拉尼奧私交甚好，波拉尼奧甚至斷言：“在當今的西班牙文壇上，比拉-馬塔斯無人能及。”比拉-馬塔斯還被波拉尼奧以一個角色寫進瞭短篇集《地球上最後的夜晚》中。

西班牙著名導演阿爾莫多瓦也說過自己最鍾愛比拉-馬塔斯的小說。