Though always considering himself a poet at heart, Roberto Bolaño ultimately cemented his literary legacy through his novels, novellas, and short story collections. After a nomadic youth spent traveling across South America and Europe, he settled in Spain, taking on various manual labor jobs by day and writing at night. He eventually shifted to prose in his early forties, driven by a desire to provide for his family, though his work retained a profound poetic sensibility. Bolaño's writing is known for its raw honesty and exploration of life's darker facets, often imbued with a distinctive lyrical quality.
This dazzling novel that established Bolano's international reputation is the story of two modern-day Quixotes--the last survivors of an underground literary movement, perhaps of literature itself--on a tragicomic quest through their darkening world.
An American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student interact in an urban community on the U.S.-Mexico border where hundreds of young factory workers have disappeared.
Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was once the quiet, unknowable, unpromising member of Chile's young poetry scene. Known for his daring sky poems, penned in smoke high above the cities, Weider's dazzling trajectory is a cause for astonishment and speculation amongst his old poetry friends. číst celé
With the release of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives in 1998,journalist Monica Maristain discovered a writer “capable of befriending his readers.” After exchanging several letters with Bolaño, Maristain formed a friendship of her own, culminating in an extensive interview with the novelist about truth and consequences, an interview that turned out to be Bolaño’s last. Appearing for the first time in English, Bolaño’s final interview is accompanied by a collection of conversations with reporters stationed throughout Latin America, providing a rich context for the work of the writer who, according to essayist Marcela Valdes, is “a T.S. Eliot or Virginia Woolf of Latin American letters.” As in all of Bolaño’s work, there is also wide-ranging discussion of the author’s many literary influences. (Explanatory notes on authors and titles that may be unfamiliar to English-language readers are included here.) The interviews, all of which were completed during the writing of the gigantic 2666, also address Bolaño’s deepest personal concerns, from his domestic life and two young children to the realities of a fatal disease.
Latin American poetry and revolutionary thoughts are narrated by the 'Mother of Mexican poetry' in Roberto Bolano's Amulet.
During the course of a single night, Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a Chilean priest, who is a member of Opus Dei, a literary critic and a mediocre poet, relives some of the crucial events of his life.
Follows Amalfitano, exiled Chilean university professor and widower with a teenage daughter, as his political disillusionment and love of poetry lead to the scandal that will force him to flee from Barcelona and take him to Santa Teresa, Mexico. It is here, in this border town, that Amalfitano meets Arcimboldi, a magician and writer whose work highlights the provisional and fragile nature of literature and life.
Found in the author's archive and published for the first time: a collection of three novellas - a joy for the many fans and followers of Roberto Bolano.
When Nuria Martí, the beautiful Spanish figure skater, is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old mansion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn't tell her is that he paid for it using embezzled public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene... Rife with political corruption, sex, jealousy and frustrated passion, The Skating Rink - narrated in turn by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous local entrepreneur - is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives.
From a master of contemporary fiction, a tale of bohemian youth on the make in Mexico City Two young poets, Jan and Remo, find themselves adrift in Mexico City. Obsessed with poetry, and, above all, with science fiction, they are eager to forge a life in the literary world--or sacrifice themselves to it. Roberto Bolaño's The Spirit of Science Fiction is a story of youth hungry for revolution, notoriety, and sexual adventure, as they work to construct a reality out of the fragments of their dreams. But as close as these friends are, the city tugs them in opposite directions. Jan withdraws from the world, shutting himself in their shared rooftop apartment where he feverishly composes fan letters to the stars of science fiction and dreams of cosmonauts and Nazis. Meanwhile, Remo runs headfirst into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city's labyrinthine streets, rundown cafés, and murky bathhouses. This kaleidoscopic work of strange and tender beauty is a fitting introduction for readers uninitiated into the thrills of Roberto Bolaño's fiction, and an indispensable addition to an ecstatic and transgressive body of work.