Trying to be Ernest Hemingway is never easy.

After reading A Moveable Feast, aspiring novelist Enrique Vila-Matas moves to Paris to be closer to his literary idol, Ernest Hemingway. Surrounded by the writers, artists and eccentrics of ‘70s Parisian cafe culture, he dresses in black, buys two pairs of reading glasses, and smokes a pipe like Sartre. Now, in later life, he reflects on his youth while giving a three-day lecture on irony. And he’s still convinced he looks like Hemingway.

Never Any End to Paris is a hilarious, playful novel about literature and the art of writing, and how life never quite goes to plan.