By Night in Chile
Roberto Bolaño
(Author)
Chris Andrews
(Translator)
Description
As through a crack in the wall, By Night in Chile's single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of Church and State in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel--Roberto Bolano's first work available in English--recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet, but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and a conservative literary critic, a sort of lap dog to the rich and powerful cultural elite, in whose villas he encounters Pablo Neruda and Ernst Junger. Father Urrutia is offered a tour of Europe by agents of Opus Dei (to study "the disintegration of the churches," a journey into realms of the surreal); and ensnared by this plum, he is next assigned--after the destruction of Allende--the secret, never-to-be-disclosed job of teaching Pinochet, at night, all about Marxism, so the junta generals can know their enemy. Soon, searingly, his memories go from bad to worse. Heart-stopping and hypnotic, By Night in Chile marks the American debut of an astonishing writer.
Product Details
Price
$13.95
$12.97
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
December 17, 2003
Pages
130
Dimensions
5.1 X 0.4 X 7.9 inches | 0.35 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780811215473
BISAC Categories:
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Become an affiliateAbout the Author
Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City, where he was a founder of the Infrarealist poetry movement. His first full-length novel, The Savage Detectives, received the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize when it appeared in 1998. Roberto Bolaño died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty.
The poet and translator Chris Andrews has won the Valle Inclan Prize and the French-American Translation Prize for his work.
Reviews
In Chris Andrews's lucid translation, Bolaño's febrile narrative tack and occasional surrel touches bring to mind the classics of Latin American magic realism; his cerebral protagonist and nonfiction borrowings are reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard and W. G. Sebald. The novel, Bolaño's first to be translated into English, is at once occasion for celebration and for mourning.