In the Tripoli of 1979, nine-year-old Sulaiman considers the origins of mulberries. They are, he decides, "the best fruit God has created", and imagines young angels conspiring to plant a crop on earth when they hear that Adam and Eve are being sent down there as punishment. This could be simply a charming piece of whimsy invented by a child – but the time and place in which Sulaiman imagines it reconfigures the story into a tale of dissidents (angels) and exiles (humans).

Sulaiman – whose adult self is the narrator of In the Country of Men – is himself the son of a dissident, Faraj. His family lives on Mulberry Street, along with the families of Ustath Rashid (who is arrested prior to the start of the novel for treasonous actions) and Ustath Jafer (a government official). The street was named for an orchard of mulberry trees, but now only one tree remains – in the garden of Ustath Rashid.

Of course, no tale of heaven and earth can be complete without acknowledging the third player. Sulaiman brings him into the story thus: "God knew of course, he's the Allknowing, but He liked the idea and so let the angels carry out their plan." In the novel, the figure of the Almighty is called not God but – close enough – Guide. "The Guide" is Colonel Gadafy who, Godlike, remains unseen but ever-present throughout this haunting debut of growing up in a world of uncertainty.

One of the book's most satisfying and moving aspects is Hisham Matar's decision to make uncertainty manifest itself to Sulaiman through the figure of his mother, Najwa. At nine, Sulaiman is able to remain relatively unaffected when Ustath Rashid, the father of his best friend, is taken away in a white car. He even finds himself somewhat drawn to the figure of Sharief, one of Rashid's abductors, who later takes to watching Sulaiman's own house when Sulaiman's father falls under suspicion of treason. But he cannot be unaffected by his mother, who starts taking copious amounts of "medicine" – sold to her by the baker in brown paper bags from under the counter – each time her husband is away (engaged, as she knows, in subversive activities). Under the effect of alcohol Najwa tells her son things she would never say when sober, revealing how she herself was crushed by authority when, as a 14-year-old girl, she was married off to a man more than twice her age after being seen holding hands with a boy in a coffee shop. What makes Najwa's tale distinctive is the fact that her laments stem not from a lack of care for her husband, but rather from the fact that his anti-state activities put him constantly under threat of discovery by the Guide's men. This is the other side of a dissident's life: the price paid by the family, who must live with fear at all times.

Away from his parents, Sulaiman's world is made up of the neighbourhood boys. But here, too, politics is never far from the reader's thoughts, even if the boys themselves aren't fully aware of how the state impinges on their childhood games. The boys are sons of governments officials or of dissidents – their parents are connected in a web of arrests, favours, confessions and betrayals. And as the neighbourhood games grow darker, Sulaiman learns about betrayal, violence and shame at first hand.

Ultimately, this is a novel most concerned with relationships between people – friends, spouses, comrades and, particularly, parents and their children. Matar movingly charts the ways in which love endures in situations of great repression, but also shows how repression threatens everything, even love, putting relationships under a strain that can be unendurable.

And whatever his subject, Matar writes beautifully. In describing the world of seas and mulberries he is a sensualist; when writing of executions and arrests he is a nuanced observer with a gift for conveying both absurdity and raw emotion. His description of a public execution is an exceptional piece of writing – he is not afraid to bring in details that seem entirely incongruous with the setting, yet serve to give it an air of greater verisimilitude. A man trying to resist being taken to the gallows reminds Sulaiman of "the way a shy woman would resist her friends' invitation to dance, pulling her shoulders up to her ears and waving her index finger nervously in front of her mouth". The scene is by turns absurd, painful and terrifying – and, with consummate confidence, at the crucial moment of the hanging Matar is able to step back from the detailed descriptions and evocative imagery to tell us, simply and chillingly: "Everybody seemed happy."

Bartleby y compañía trata de todos aquellos no escritores o escritores interruptus que han existido. Aquellos que, como Rimbaud o Rulfo, dejaron de escribir tras la publicación de sus obras maestras. Aquellos que nunca escribieron, como Sócrates o como Clément Cadou, que tras conocer a Witold Gombrowicz (a quien admiré mucho en mis juveniles años), decidió no escribir nunca y sólo fue autor de su epitafio, que pasó así a ser su opera omnia.

Bartleby y compañía, nos remite a esos escritores del `No`, como él los llama, a los que han renunciado a la escritura (con pretexto o sin él) y también a la posibilidad de que esos libros en realidad no escritos, floten o estén en estado latente en el mundo, hasta que alguien los encuentre y los escriba. Habla también Vila-Matas de una biblioteca de libros no publicados en Burlington, Vermont (USA), en donde aquellos libros escritos, pero no leídos, son mimados, guardados y cuidados con esmero, a la espera de lector.

Dietario voluble es, ante todo, un tapiz que se dispara en muchas direcciones. Este libro abarca los tres últimos años (2005-2008) del cuaderno de notas personal de Enrique Vila-Matas. Al tratarse de un diario literario que se origina en la lectura, es una obra escrita desde el centro mismo de la escritura. Combina los comentarios sobre libros leídos con la experiencia y la memoria personal, y va proponiendo la desaparición de ciertas fronteras narrativas y abriendo camino para la autobiografía amplia, siempre a la búsqueda de que lo real sea visto como espacio idóneo para acomodar lo imaginario, y así novelizar la vida.

Compuesto en parte por notas que pasaron directamente del cuaderno personal del escritor a la edición dominical de El País de Cataluña, pero también por importantes fragmentos que no se movieron del cuaderno y que ahora dejan de ser inéditos, y también por notas que han sido escritas para completar esta edición.

Este inquietante y misterioso libro criminal fue escrito por Enrique Vila-Matas cuando en 1975 vivía en París y leyó que a Unamuno, mientras vivía en esa misma ciudad, se le ocurrió la idea de una novela que provocara la muerte de quien la leyera. Vila-Matas sufrió un leve revés cuando, al decidir llevar a cabo el proyecto de este libro asesino, y comentárselo a Marguerite Duras, que era entonces su casera, ella le dijo que se trataba de algo irrealizable, que nunca ningún libro fue como la tumba de Tutankhamon, lo que llevó a Vila-Matas a comprender que sólo lograría el efecto mortal buscado si practicaba el crimen en el espacio estricto de la escritura.

Publicado por primera vez en 1977, La asesina ilustrada significó la revelación de Vila-Matas como escritor.