Marcelo, a humble clerk in a Barcelona office who might have come from a novel by Kafka, inhibits a world peopled by characters in literature. He once wrote a novel about the impossibility of love, but since then he has written nothing and a mental trauma has meant that he has been unable to put pen to paper; he has become a 'Bartleby'.
Part picaresque novel, part intimate diary, part memoir, part philosophical musings, this work serves as a labyrinth in which writers cross endlessly surprising paths, while the author's protagonist leads the reader on a journey from European cities to the Azores and the Chilean port of Valparaiso.
Marcelo inhabits a world peopled by characters in literature. He once wrote a novel about the impossibility of love, but since then he has written nothing and a nervous breakdown has meant that he has been unable to put pen to paper.