In the middle of the Nevada desert stands a solitary poplar tree, covered in hundreds of pairs of shoes. Further along U.S. Route 50, a lonely prostitute falls in love with a collector of found photographs. In Las Vegas, an Argentine man builds a peculiar monument to Jorge Luis Borges. On the run from the authorities, Kenny takes up permanent residence in the legal non-place of Singapore International Airport. These are some of the narrative strands that make up this arborescently structured novel, hailed as one of the most daring experiments in Spanish literature of recent years. Full of references to indie cinema, collage, conceptual art, practical architecture, the history of computers and the decadence of the novel, Nocilla Dream finds great beauty in emptiness and reveals something essential about contemporary experience.

Nocilla Experience es un caleidoscopio ficcional, donde cabe todo menos el sopor. Harold acaba su última caja de cereales, deja conectada su primitiva videoconsola y decide recorrer Norteamérica durante un lustro. Un tipo que maneja las grúas del puerto de Nueva York diseña una casa para suicidas. En Basora, un marine se enamora de una irakí en el instante en que la encañona. Un tal Julio da forma a una Rayuela alternativa. Sandra vuela de Londres a Palma de Mallorca al tiempo que se resuelve el misterio del incendio de la Torre Windsor. El capitán Willard sigue esperando en Saigón aquella misión: nunca imaginó lo especial que sería. Hay gente que utiliza los oleoductos vacíos subterráneos de la antigua Unión Soviética para cruzar las fronteras. Un cocinero proyecta cocinar el horizonte. Nocilla Experience es un caleidoscopio ficcional, donde cabe todo menos el sopor, incluso las enseñanzas de un código samurái, sin olvidar las andanzas de un elenco de protagonistas con rarezas de primera magnitud que no son más que la expresión de su radical soledad. Un libro con muchos ecos: de la literatura de Perèc al cine de Jarmusch, pasando por Coppola. Reseñas: «Cada página es un disparo lleno de poesía y desolación, un relato que podría dar origen a otro libro, un destello de intuiciones desconcertantes a veces, aterradoras otras, y emocionantes.» Nuria Azancot, El Cultural «Una aventura narrativa que no debería pasar desapercibida.» Juan Bonilla «Este libro, según me atrevo a arriesgar, se convertirá en un hito de la narrativa en castellano del siglo XXI.» Nelson Rivera, El Nacional de Caracas «Agustín Fernández Mallo entrega una novela seria, trabajada, aparejada con su propia poética. Este libro salta, está vivo. Y habla de cosas que conciernen a los lectores de mañana (que deben empezar a serlo hoy).» Jose María Pozuelo Yvancos, ABCD «Cuánto bien le hace a los narradores compartir la ambición de los poetas. Ser poetas. La regeneración de nuestra lengua dependerá de mantener ese hálito. De momento, Fernández Mallo ha traído una gran alegría a los que amamos este mundo, porque nos mejora a todos y demuestra que el futuro es ya.» Gabi Martínez, Qué Leer «La primera parte del Proyecto Nocilla, una maquinación literaria que llega para lavar la cara de los géneros literarios (...) Virtuoso experimento.» Use Lahoz, El Periódico de Cataluña

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.

A landmark in contemporary Spanish literature, Agustin Fernandez Mallo’s Nocilla Trilogy—Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Lab, and Nocilla Experience—presents multiple narratives of people and places that reflect America and the world in the digital age of the twenty-first century. In the middle of the Nevada desert stands a solitary poplar tree covered in hundreds of pairs of shoes. Farther along Route 50, a lonely prostitute falls in love with a collector of found photographs. In Las Vegas, an Argentine man builds a peculiar monument to Jorge Luis Borges. On the run from the authorities, Kenny takes up permanent residence in the legal non-place of Singapore International Airport, while the novelists Enrique Vila-Matas and Agustín Fernández Mallo encounter each other on an oil rig. These are just a few of the narrative strands that make up Fernández Mallo’s Nocilla Trilogy—Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Experience, and Nocilla Lab. Greeted as a landmark in contemporary Spanish literature, the entire trilogy has not been available in English until now. “By juxtaposing fiction with non-fiction . . . the author has created a hybrid genre that mirrors our networked lives, allowing us to inhabit its interstitial spaces. A physician as well as an artist, Fernández Mallo can spot a mermaid’s tail in a neutron monitor; estrange theorems into pure poetry.” —Andrew Gallix, The Independent “An encyclopedia, a survey, a deranged anthropology: Nocilla Dream is just the coldhearted poetics that might see America for what it really is. There is something deeply strange and finally unknowable about this book, in the very best way.” —Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet