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Attila
From the author of Last Words on Earth—an reimagining of Roberto Bolaño’s life—comes a book articulating the final years of Aliocha Coll, one of Spain’s most innovative writers as he completes his masterpiece, Attila (also available from Open Letter Books).
Living alone in Paris, estranged from his family, suffering from heartbreak and possibly madness, Alioscha Coll works with saintly intensity on what will be his final Attila. Once the final words have been written, he vows to end his life, convinced that his existence will lose all purpose.
Told through the viewpoint of a literary critic and journalist, Attila expands Javier Serena’s investigation into artists who remained dedicated to their art, to their aesthetic vision in the face of complete dismissal by the publishing world and reading public. In the case of Last Words on Earth and Ricardo Funes (the stand in for Bolaño in that novel), things work out and he briefly becomes the star of the literary world—could the same happen for Alioscha Coll?
Living alone in Paris, estranged from his family, suffering from heartbreak and possibly madness, Alioscha Coll works with saintly intensity on what will be his final Attila. Once the final words have been written, he vows to end his life, convinced that his existence will lose all purpose.
Told through the viewpoint of a literary critic and journalist, Attila expands Javier Serena’s investigation into artists who remained dedicated to their art, to their aesthetic vision in the face of complete dismissal by the publishing world and reading public. In the case of Last Words on Earth and Ricardo Funes (the stand in for Bolaño in that novel), things work out and he briefly becomes the star of the literary world—could the same happen for Alioscha Coll?
150 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2015
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341 people want to read
About the author
Javier Serena
5 books2 followersJavier Serena was born in Pamplona, Spain in 1982. He has published Las torres de El Carpio, La estación baldía, Last Words on Earth, and Atila (forthcoming from Open Letter). He has stayed at writers residences with the Fundación Antonio Gala (Córdoba, Spain) and Les Rècollets (Paris, France).
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 28, 2025
The romantic image of the artist single-mindedly devoted to their craft, even at the expense of their worldly commitments, runs deep in Western culture. Whether it is the restless spirit of Rimbaud or the starving artists of the Hemingway exiles in Paris, artists willing to sacrifice for their art are celebrated throughout the Western canon. Javier Serena's Attila is an important corrective to this romantic narrative and one that underlines the impossibility of bohemianism in late capitalism.
Attila is a fictionalized biography of Alioscha Coll, the author of Attila who committed suicide in 1990. Coll's final years are told through the eyes of an unnamed friend who was impressed by the author's work and tries to help pull him from the whirlpool of obsession as he tries to complete Attila, his life's work. Serena's Coll is a pitiful figure who is immiserated by his devotion to his art and his unwillingness to compromise in even the most basic ways. Still, Coll's gifts are undeniable. He is able to translate classical works at the level of even the most accomplished faculty in Europe. But his unwillingness to get out of his own way ultimately leads to his demise. Serena's book is unflinching and pointed in its criticism both of its fictionalized subject and the cruel world that immiserates him.
Attila is being released at the same time as Coll's Attila is being translated into English for the first time. While I appreciate Open Letter's releasing them together, I found Serena's Attila cut against my enjoyment of Coll's work. Much of the allure of Coll's Attila lies in its mystery and obscurity. Trying to parse difficult sentences or letting pages of difficult text gradually wash over the reader. By reducing Coll's work to a biography of struggle, Serena risks letting the magic be explained away as madness. While some may enjoy Serena's Attila as a companion, I would caution letting it influence the reading of Coll's complex and transcendental novel too much.
Attila is a fictionalized biography of Alioscha Coll, the author of Attila who committed suicide in 1990. Coll's final years are told through the eyes of an unnamed friend who was impressed by the author's work and tries to help pull him from the whirlpool of obsession as he tries to complete Attila, his life's work. Serena's Coll is a pitiful figure who is immiserated by his devotion to his art and his unwillingness to compromise in even the most basic ways. Still, Coll's gifts are undeniable. He is able to translate classical works at the level of even the most accomplished faculty in Europe. But his unwillingness to get out of his own way ultimately leads to his demise. Serena's book is unflinching and pointed in its criticism both of its fictionalized subject and the cruel world that immiserates him.
Attila is being released at the same time as Coll's Attila is being translated into English for the first time. While I appreciate Open Letter's releasing them together, I found Serena's Attila cut against my enjoyment of Coll's work. Much of the allure of Coll's Attila lies in its mystery and obscurity. Trying to parse difficult sentences or letting pages of difficult text gradually wash over the reader. By reducing Coll's work to a biography of struggle, Serena risks letting the magic be explained away as madness. While some may enjoy Serena's Attila as a companion, I would caution letting it influence the reading of Coll's complex and transcendental novel too much.
July 31, 2025
raises some questions about what it means to posthumously design a fictional narrative around a real person as an attempt to explain their art (and still barely scratch the surface). The concept sits kinda weird with me, but some parts are still beautifully done.
April 6, 2025
We’ve all probably found ourselves, at one point or another in our lives, teetering at the edge of a self-selected rabbit hole, a rabbit hole that our preliminary investigations of suggest could engulf us—heart, mind, and soul—for the rest of our lives, were we willing to submit to the claims of an idea to their end. What are these claims that take hold of creative people in the arts and sciences? What effects do they have on those they possess and those friends and family members of the possessed, the collateral damage of lives lead without compromise? This is what Javier Serena sets out to explore in Attila.
Serena’s Attila is a response to the Attila of Spanish novelist Aliocha Coll, a novel not published until after Coll’s death, a novel whose completion paved the way for Coll’s suicide, they only way out of the rabbit hole he had dug for himself. Serena’s Attila explores the obsessive mindset not from the point of view of the artists possessed but of a friend watching another friend slowly self-destruct. Serena’s Alioscha (the spelling difference is Serena’s) finds the idea of getting a job to support himself outrageous—even his time belongs to his novel, including times given to eating, bathing, socializing. As with the real Aliocha, Serena’s Alioscha has stacks of manuscripts that remain unpublished: no one understands them although they can tell the works have an artistic integrity. It’s one thing to encounter a code written in an unfamiliar language. It’s another when the code is written in the language you speak—the code’s words and phrases make sense on their own, but, collectively, the semantic content seems to disappear when the phrases are added together.
Charles Bukowski once titled a book You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense. Alioscha seems to have gone unpublished so long, and has seemed unpublishable for so long, that any attempts to publish something by him are looked at by Alioscha as either an unwitting compromise to contemporary tastes or disposable trash (they’re both the same in Alioscha’s eyes). Alioscha writes for an audience of one—himself. No one else seems to understand what he long ago gave up trying to explain.
“Alioscha … long had the custom of devising an elaborate cartography of his books, differentiating the main scenes from the secondary ones and highlighting the most poetic passages, just as he always handwrote the first draft in his old-fashioned penmanship, only typing the final text later, once he’d achieved a clean manuscript. He told me more than once he’d spend a whole morning on a single sentence, changing every verb and every adjective time and again, endlessly trying out new solutions, only to opt for the original version, unable to move on if a single word wasn’t to his satisfaction. He worked so much and with such devotion and felt such a sense of responsibility that he could go weeks without leaving his room, barely getting up from his desk, engaged in battle with some lethal paragraph. Not one day went by when he had a single minute to spare, he claimed.”
His obsession with creating something new that simultaneously converses with the classics succeeds only in alienating him from his father and the woman who would be his lovers. (He obsesses over his idealized notions of female beauty and attitude, too, during the few spare hours a day his writing allows him.) He has created a way of life for himself that allows no going back.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
Serena’s Attila is a response to the Attila of Spanish novelist Aliocha Coll, a novel not published until after Coll’s death, a novel whose completion paved the way for Coll’s suicide, they only way out of the rabbit hole he had dug for himself. Serena’s Attila explores the obsessive mindset not from the point of view of the artists possessed but of a friend watching another friend slowly self-destruct. Serena’s Alioscha (the spelling difference is Serena’s) finds the idea of getting a job to support himself outrageous—even his time belongs to his novel, including times given to eating, bathing, socializing. As with the real Aliocha, Serena’s Alioscha has stacks of manuscripts that remain unpublished: no one understands them although they can tell the works have an artistic integrity. It’s one thing to encounter a code written in an unfamiliar language. It’s another when the code is written in the language you speak—the code’s words and phrases make sense on their own, but, collectively, the semantic content seems to disappear when the phrases are added together.
Charles Bukowski once titled a book You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense. Alioscha seems to have gone unpublished so long, and has seemed unpublishable for so long, that any attempts to publish something by him are looked at by Alioscha as either an unwitting compromise to contemporary tastes or disposable trash (they’re both the same in Alioscha’s eyes). Alioscha writes for an audience of one—himself. No one else seems to understand what he long ago gave up trying to explain.
“Alioscha … long had the custom of devising an elaborate cartography of his books, differentiating the main scenes from the secondary ones and highlighting the most poetic passages, just as he always handwrote the first draft in his old-fashioned penmanship, only typing the final text later, once he’d achieved a clean manuscript. He told me more than once he’d spend a whole morning on a single sentence, changing every verb and every adjective time and again, endlessly trying out new solutions, only to opt for the original version, unable to move on if a single word wasn’t to his satisfaction. He worked so much and with such devotion and felt such a sense of responsibility that he could go weeks without leaving his room, barely getting up from his desk, engaged in battle with some lethal paragraph. Not one day went by when he had a single minute to spare, he claimed.”
His obsession with creating something new that simultaneously converses with the classics succeeds only in alienating him from his father and the woman who would be his lovers. (He obsesses over his idealized notions of female beauty and attitude, too, during the few spare hours a day his writing allows him.) He has created a way of life for himself that allows no going back.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
January 9, 2026
I don’t know what it means that this is a fictionalization of a real author who killed himself after finishing his last book. Not sure if it’s supposed to suggest a way to read the other work, I personally don’t think it is. I think it’s a portrait of a type of person, an obsessive who can’t see past a childish image of what an artist should be, and it does this quite well. I’ve known people like that. And the real author part is just a jumping off point. Just how I interpreted it. I loved that it was short and quick and narrow in scope.
June 2, 2025
The book about the book! It didn't help me understand Aliocha's insane novel but it did help me understand the man himself. Sad read, but a great companion to the main novel.
Read
December 21, 2025A nice intro to Aliocha Coll.
Read
May 22, 2025Imagine a Godard film about a novelist tragically running around Paris, insert the loud crashing intermezzos and text and you have an image of what Javier Serena has crafted here. A fascinating, infuriating, and in the end tragic portrait of a writer deranged and damaged by his own fancies.
June 12, 2025
Aliocha Coll was a 20th century Spanish writer who produced experimental books, of which few were published and those that did failed to connect with a large audience - hence his name being practically unknown today.
In Attila, Javier Serena imagines Coll’s final year alive, writing what he knew would be his last book, Attila, living in abject poverty in Paris, heart broken, mental illness in full control, before he killed himself at age 42 in 1990.
The publisher Open Letter has published both of Katie Whittemore’s translations of the very different novels of the same name, Attila, by their respective authors alongside one another this year. I was drawn to Serena’s book rather than Coll’s because I heard that Coll’s prose was… tough. Which was backed up after reading a sample of it. It’s the kind of writing where you read a sentence, a paragraph, a page, and have absolutely no idea what the author’s banging on about. Think Finnegans Wake. Ugh.
Serena on the other hand is not doing avant-fart bullshit, so I got along with his style a lot better, and I was curious to learn about this obscure writer of which little is known. It sounded like a compelling, if morbid, premise as well. Besides the disappointing Author’s Note at the end that states that nearly everything in the book was made up, so Coll’s life remains a question mark, the story itself just wasn’t that interesting.
Coll was devoted to his art - that intensity with which he approached writing doesn’t seem to have been fabricated - and I feel like there must have been an element of mental illness present to have driven him to such a desperate act in the end.
Otherwise, Serena’s Coll is a painfully lonely chap - his wife left him, his final girlfriend left him, his few friends live abroad and visit him occasionally - and he has a fraught relationship with his horrible father, on whom he is financially dependent. And the dramatic scenes between Coll and his father are the book’s most engaging, as are the narrator’s frank assessments of Coll’s writing (“impenetrable”).
It’s hard to feel sorry for the guy though. He’s such a stubborn, single-minded person to the point of hopeless immaturity. Serena’s Coll 100% believes in the starving artist cliche. That an artist is only true if they devote themselves selflessly to their art. That only great art can be accomplished by sacrificing everything in service to it.
But look at Coll’s legacy: nobody knows who this guy is - and I don’t just mean the author writing about his life, although that seems to be the case too - but most bookish people have never heard of him because his books are terrible. The ones that have been published at least - a number still haven’t been, probably because they’re even less appealing!
Just because you devote yourself to your art doesn’t mean your art is guaranteed to be good - Coll is a perfect example of this. Similarly, those who have day jobs and write in their spare time have as much chance of producing great art as those who are unemployed and focus on their art exclusively. TS Eliot was a bank manager, Kafka worked in insurance and innumerable other authors have worked regular jobs while they wrote the books that would achieve the critical and commercial success that would enable them to write full-time.
I don’t think Serena’s Coll is a bad person but he brings a lot of his own misery onto himself and that childish martyr attitude makes for a largely unsympathetic and trying character. And I understand that Serena’s Coll is not the real Coll, who may have had a wholly separate view on artistic creation, but even if he did it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still basically unknown after pursuing his art as fervently as he did.
Javier Serena is a decent writer - I just don’t think Aliocha Coll is a great subject. Serena’s Attila is about an unremarkable archetype - the starving artist - that he doesn’t do anything especially fresh or unique with here. Attila is sporadically interesting but not consistently enough to make this a good novel.
In Attila, Javier Serena imagines Coll’s final year alive, writing what he knew would be his last book, Attila, living in abject poverty in Paris, heart broken, mental illness in full control, before he killed himself at age 42 in 1990.
The publisher Open Letter has published both of Katie Whittemore’s translations of the very different novels of the same name, Attila, by their respective authors alongside one another this year. I was drawn to Serena’s book rather than Coll’s because I heard that Coll’s prose was… tough. Which was backed up after reading a sample of it. It’s the kind of writing where you read a sentence, a paragraph, a page, and have absolutely no idea what the author’s banging on about. Think Finnegans Wake. Ugh.
Serena on the other hand is not doing avant-fart bullshit, so I got along with his style a lot better, and I was curious to learn about this obscure writer of which little is known. It sounded like a compelling, if morbid, premise as well. Besides the disappointing Author’s Note at the end that states that nearly everything in the book was made up, so Coll’s life remains a question mark, the story itself just wasn’t that interesting.
Coll was devoted to his art - that intensity with which he approached writing doesn’t seem to have been fabricated - and I feel like there must have been an element of mental illness present to have driven him to such a desperate act in the end.
Otherwise, Serena’s Coll is a painfully lonely chap - his wife left him, his final girlfriend left him, his few friends live abroad and visit him occasionally - and he has a fraught relationship with his horrible father, on whom he is financially dependent. And the dramatic scenes between Coll and his father are the book’s most engaging, as are the narrator’s frank assessments of Coll’s writing (“impenetrable”).
It’s hard to feel sorry for the guy though. He’s such a stubborn, single-minded person to the point of hopeless immaturity. Serena’s Coll 100% believes in the starving artist cliche. That an artist is only true if they devote themselves selflessly to their art. That only great art can be accomplished by sacrificing everything in service to it.
But look at Coll’s legacy: nobody knows who this guy is - and I don’t just mean the author writing about his life, although that seems to be the case too - but most bookish people have never heard of him because his books are terrible. The ones that have been published at least - a number still haven’t been, probably because they’re even less appealing!
Just because you devote yourself to your art doesn’t mean your art is guaranteed to be good - Coll is a perfect example of this. Similarly, those who have day jobs and write in their spare time have as much chance of producing great art as those who are unemployed and focus on their art exclusively. TS Eliot was a bank manager, Kafka worked in insurance and innumerable other authors have worked regular jobs while they wrote the books that would achieve the critical and commercial success that would enable them to write full-time.
I don’t think Serena’s Coll is a bad person but he brings a lot of his own misery onto himself and that childish martyr attitude makes for a largely unsympathetic and trying character. And I understand that Serena’s Coll is not the real Coll, who may have had a wholly separate view on artistic creation, but even if he did it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still basically unknown after pursuing his art as fervently as he did.
Javier Serena is a decent writer - I just don’t think Aliocha Coll is a great subject. Serena’s Attila is about an unremarkable archetype - the starving artist - that he doesn’t do anything especially fresh or unique with here. Attila is sporadically interesting but not consistently enough to make this a good novel.
April 20, 2025
This is a somewhat dubious book. It makes no attempt to hide the fact that it's a sort of faux-account of the last days of Spanish writer Aliocha Coll, yet the author is also very clear (in the afterward) that neither the events nor the characters in the book reflect those of Coll's life. I wonder what Coll himself would think of this book? Given his death in November of 1990, he has no means of objecting.
(What I've just said is not strictly true. Necromantic evocation is alive and thriving in these troubled times. Coll's shade could be called up from its place of rest and impassioned contemplation, shown a copy of the book, and asked what he thinks of it. Needless to say, if I were to perform this operation, this would be the least of my inquiries. Coll's shade would constitute the perfect oracle, though he'd likely refer me back to certain passages in the book on which this book is partially based.)
That said, it's compelling enough. I've been reading this alongside Coll's final book of the same name: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
...I don't know if I'll necessarily finish Coll's Atila. It's absolutely brilliant, but it's also largely incomprehensible (save for one long chapter which seems to be the only one that has a discernible narrative.) It's not necessarily the kind of book one reads in a single sitting. Rather, as hinted at above, it might serve better as a sort of oracle. One could take it in small doses over a period of several years or steep oneself in its impenetrable mysteries for weeks as a time, both methods having their particular utilities. One might conceivably alternate between the two methods. The literary landscape in which Coll's book was received was, and still remains, far too narrow in its approaches to rightly appreciate a book like that one (not to be confused with the book I'm currently reviewing.) We need to bring back the unaccountable procedures of the necromancers and diviners.
Anyway, to return to this book, I can recommend it only if it's read during the same period as its unfathomable twin (Open Letter has conveniently published them both at the same time.) Of the two of them, Coll's book appears to be far more accurate, whereas this one is an obvious (and self-admitted) work of fiction. The real is never as straightforward as it is in Serena's book, whereas Coll's hits the mark with the precision and clarity of a modern Pythoness.
(What I've just said is not strictly true. Necromantic evocation is alive and thriving in these troubled times. Coll's shade could be called up from its place of rest and impassioned contemplation, shown a copy of the book, and asked what he thinks of it. Needless to say, if I were to perform this operation, this would be the least of my inquiries. Coll's shade would constitute the perfect oracle, though he'd likely refer me back to certain passages in the book on which this book is partially based.)
That said, it's compelling enough. I've been reading this alongside Coll's final book of the same name: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
...I don't know if I'll necessarily finish Coll's Atila. It's absolutely brilliant, but it's also largely incomprehensible (save for one long chapter which seems to be the only one that has a discernible narrative.) It's not necessarily the kind of book one reads in a single sitting. Rather, as hinted at above, it might serve better as a sort of oracle. One could take it in small doses over a period of several years or steep oneself in its impenetrable mysteries for weeks as a time, both methods having their particular utilities. One might conceivably alternate between the two methods. The literary landscape in which Coll's book was received was, and still remains, far too narrow in its approaches to rightly appreciate a book like that one (not to be confused with the book I'm currently reviewing.) We need to bring back the unaccountable procedures of the necromancers and diviners.
Anyway, to return to this book, I can recommend it only if it's read during the same period as its unfathomable twin (Open Letter has conveniently published them both at the same time.) Of the two of them, Coll's book appears to be far more accurate, whereas this one is an obvious (and self-admitted) work of fiction. The real is never as straightforward as it is in Serena's book, whereas Coll's hits the mark with the precision and clarity of a modern Pythoness.
May 8, 2025
How often do you find the sense of reasoning so correct as to offer an impartial and unprejudiced view of a person? Especially if it is a person you have known for a short time. Well, this book gives us glimpses of a character who is at once ridiculous and cuts a sorry figure for himself in society. At the same time, he is your omniscient hero of a narrative that depicts the last vestiges of a writer and translator of Christopher Marlowe, who is teetering on the brink of despair, to give the final touches to a genre-bending work of art in the form of his proposed final novel Attila.
Told through the viewpoint of a cultural critic and friend of Coll, and taking the title from Coll's own posthumously published novel (published by Open Letter together with this book in April, 2025: Attila ), this book expands the author's inquiry into writers who remain dedicated to their art, to their aesthetic vision, in the face of a dismissive publishing industry and inexistent readership. Javier Serena presents a tormented and uncompromising figure who is at once at odds with himself and the entire world, and one who has sunk so low as to indulge in collecting garbage from the neighbourhood to eke out a living. The inherent positivity in Aliocha's character is the only redeeming feature that is depicted as he never gives up hope of completing his artistic vision, at once while contemplating the sordid vice of an increasingly insular world. It all makes for an interesting drama, the indelibly inexhaustible marks of which are depicted in the final pages of his second and final novel presented to the narrator as a last parting song...
I opened the book to the end, anxious to read the very last page, impatient to know his last syllables among the living, his tremulous parting song, and only when confronted with those lines, which he must have typed while already in possession of the fatal drugs, could I again hear his lucent voice, the noble voice that longed for beauty and yearned to be so full and so true, the voice he stood behind with such courage and faith that it condemned him to exist in permanent state of estrangement until the day he died.
Told through the viewpoint of a cultural critic and friend of Coll, and taking the title from Coll's own posthumously published novel (published by Open Letter together with this book in April, 2025: Attila ), this book expands the author's inquiry into writers who remain dedicated to their art, to their aesthetic vision, in the face of a dismissive publishing industry and inexistent readership. Javier Serena presents a tormented and uncompromising figure who is at once at odds with himself and the entire world, and one who has sunk so low as to indulge in collecting garbage from the neighbourhood to eke out a living. The inherent positivity in Aliocha's character is the only redeeming feature that is depicted as he never gives up hope of completing his artistic vision, at once while contemplating the sordid vice of an increasingly insular world. It all makes for an interesting drama, the indelibly inexhaustible marks of which are depicted in the final pages of his second and final novel presented to the narrator as a last parting song...
I opened the book to the end, anxious to read the very last page, impatient to know his last syllables among the living, his tremulous parting song, and only when confronted with those lines, which he must have typed while already in possession of the fatal drugs, could I again hear his lucent voice, the noble voice that longed for beauty and yearned to be so full and so true, the voice he stood behind with such courage and faith that it condemned him to exist in permanent state of estrangement until the day he died.
May 17, 2025
This novel is not quite what I expected.
I started Serena's Attila after having read the first two or three chapters of Coll's Attila, with the hope that reading the former would help me better understand the latter. Maybe in some sense it will, but I expected Serena's work to engage more directly with Coll's art. Instead, it tiptoes around his art and speculates about his relationship with his father, his failed romantic relationships, his inexplicable decision to lead a life of solitude, etc.
None of these discourses are especially compelling; Alioscha is a flat character who lands firmly within the well-trodden "tortured genius" archetype. What I expected, more than anything, was more insight into his creative process. We're told that he spends many hours re-writing a single sentence, but we're never given the sentence.
Serena's prose (translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore) is at times poetic and uniformly clean technically, perhaps to the point of sterility, which may have been a conscious effort to contrast itself with Coll's enigmatic, inaccessible prose. But I think any effort to tame its own ambitions overshot its mark. This novel is a fine companion piece to Coll's Attila -- perhaps you might consider it a fictional extended foreword -- but unfortunately I do not believe it can stand on its own merits. Serena is a talented writer, but he played this one a bit too safe.
I started Serena's Attila after having read the first two or three chapters of Coll's Attila, with the hope that reading the former would help me better understand the latter. Maybe in some sense it will, but I expected Serena's work to engage more directly with Coll's art. Instead, it tiptoes around his art and speculates about his relationship with his father, his failed romantic relationships, his inexplicable decision to lead a life of solitude, etc.
None of these discourses are especially compelling; Alioscha is a flat character who lands firmly within the well-trodden "tortured genius" archetype. What I expected, more than anything, was more insight into his creative process. We're told that he spends many hours re-writing a single sentence, but we're never given the sentence.
Serena's prose (translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore) is at times poetic and uniformly clean technically, perhaps to the point of sterility, which may have been a conscious effort to contrast itself with Coll's enigmatic, inaccessible prose. But I think any effort to tame its own ambitions overshot its mark. This novel is a fine companion piece to Coll's Attila -- perhaps you might consider it a fictional extended foreword -- but unfortunately I do not believe it can stand on its own merits. Serena is a talented writer, but he played this one a bit too safe.
June 3, 2025
Uppenbarligen fiktion, skriven på ett sätt som gör det uppenbart att det handlar om fiktion redan innan man får berättat för sig att det är fiktion; tyvärr också någorlunda menlös, habil men menlös fiktion. Blir mindre en berättelse om ett desperat konstnärskap, mer en berättelse om hur Serena föreställer sig att ett sådant konstnärskap skulle kunna vara. Den faktiska Aliocha är fascinerande, på grund av den märkliga text han skrivit, den fiktiva Aliocha mycket mindre fascinerande — istället för att mytologisera och romantisera, istället för att fabulera är det som att Serena mest drar ifrån ett draperi för att visa att det sitter en någorlunda normal, ganska sorglig, men lite tråkig människa bakom det; vilket kanske är själva motsatsen till vad Aliocha gjorde – istället för att låta fantasin och kreativiteten gå bortom alla rimliga gränser låter Serena den vara rimligt och mycket begränsad.
September 28, 2025
Javier Serena writes a fictionalized telling of the final days of Aliocha Coll's life, as he was writing his final novel, Attila. We watch as Serena's character, Alioscha, loses his mind, battles through mental health issues to put the finishing touches on his novel. We know what's going to happen at the end, but we see just how bad it gets.
Read this immediate after reading Coll's Attila, and I enjoyed this one much more. I love the perspective of watching a friend watch his friend going down this road, and not being able to do much to help.
This novella is simple, but not boring. It doesn't seem like there are wasted words, not words left out. I think reading the two books side by side was well worth the experience.
Read this immediate after reading Coll's Attila, and I enjoyed this one much more. I love the perspective of watching a friend watch his friend going down this road, and not being able to do much to help.
This novella is simple, but not boring. It doesn't seem like there are wasted words, not words left out. I think reading the two books side by side was well worth the experience.
July 22, 2025
A companion piece to Aliocha Coll's "impossible" novel ATTILA, Serena's ATTILA is a fictionalized account of the last days of Coll's (named Alioscha in this novel; the extra "s" a deliberate distancing) life as he finished the novel and subsequently took his own life.
Even ignoring the real-life corollary in Coll, this is still a great, brief record of an artist's seemingly inexplicable downward spiral of madness and obsession, as a lax spectator—like Rodrigo, the narrator of Lipsector's THE HOUR OF THE STAR—negligently watches on as a person slowly deteriorates toward willful annihilation.
Even ignoring the real-life corollary in Coll, this is still a great, brief record of an artist's seemingly inexplicable downward spiral of madness and obsession, as a lax spectator—like Rodrigo, the narrator of Lipsector's THE HOUR OF THE STAR—negligently watches on as a person slowly deteriorates toward willful annihilation.
August 17, 2025
A compelling spiral to a tragic end
4.25 stars ✨
I read this book right after finishing Attila by Aliocha Coll, and while I understand that Serena’s Attila is a work of fiction, I’m intrigued by the exploration of the artist behind the art. Reading this book was a refreshingly meta experience, direct, sad, and heart wrenching, but on the whole beautiful.
4.25 stars ✨
I read this book right after finishing Attila by Aliocha Coll, and while I understand that Serena’s Attila is a work of fiction, I’m intrigued by the exploration of the artist behind the art. Reading this book was a refreshingly meta experience, direct, sad, and heart wrenching, but on the whole beautiful.
May 25, 2025
So sad and beautifully written account about someone’s obsessions taking his life instead of enriching it. My heart broke for Aliosha, and Serena writes about his pain with such crushing detail you could feel it.
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June 3, 2025Great little novel based on the life of an absolutely wild author. This is good (maybe even necessary) pre-reading for the real-life Coll’s Attila.
October 13, 2025
Aliocha Coll, a self-tortured artist with a self-assigned expiry manically meanders and odd-jobs through 1990 Paris, befriending fish and weirding out women, while striving to scribe the scaturient script that floods his daily thoughts. And maybe he succeeded, as the original Attila (also recently translated and released by the same team that prepped this one for an English release) is both an agitatingly beautiful and vexatiously cryptic read. Heavy Fisher King (the Gilliam one) vibes, with all the weightier emotional ballast that comes with it being a semi-speculative biopictorial.
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July 26, 2024So excited for the translation for this to come out with a translation of Aliocha Coll's Attila :)
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