Nocilla Lab

The first part of Nocilla Lab tells the story of the birth of the trilogy through an internal monologue. After being
knocked down by a motorbike during a trip in Thailand, Agustín Fernández Mallo was left bedridden for four weeks
and had the opportunity to begin writing the Nocilla Trilogy. Seven years later, when he travels with his girlfriend to
Cerdena, they come across an old penitentiary that has been converted into an agri-tourism site. A memory of reading
Paul Auster's The Music of Chance in Portuguese and a ‘No entry’ sign bring the first part of the story to a close. In the
second part, the author’s voice disappears and gives way to a fragmented account that is accompanied by a succession
of drawings, sketches and quotes about some of the characters inside the penitentiary. The third part of the book is a succession of post-poetic flashes and varied etymologies – both ironic and distant – alongside tributes to García Márquez, Wittgenstein, and Duras. The book then takes on the form of a comic and finishes with an encounter between Enrique Vila-Matas and the author on an oil rig. Nocilla Lab is a fitting conclusion to one of the most daring literary experiments of the twenty-first century.