Bernd Wahlbrinck
FABULOUS BOOKS
LOOKING FOR
AN AUTHOR:
44 Reviews of
Non-existent Books
FABULOUS BOOKS LOOKING FOR AN AUTHOR is a satirical anthology comprising 44 reviews of books that do not exist, including the fictitious front covers of those books. It features such diverse topics as literature, language, music, art, movies, travel, famous people, and science.
Odd as that may seem, Wahlbrinck has got a number of famous predecessors. Above all, there is "A Perfect Vacuum" ("Doskonala Próznia"), published in 1973 by the famous Polish author Stanislaw Lem, comprising 16 reviews of books that were never written. Another one is "Ficciones", published in 1944 by the renowned Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges.
There is a decidedly subtle form of laziness about this kind of literature which probably induced Wahlbrinck to write his book. Borges himself explains it in a very ironic way in the prólogo (prologue) to his "Ficciones":
“It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of compos-ing vast books – setting out in 500 pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them.“