The Skating Rink
Roberto Bolaño
(Author)
Chris Andrews
(Translator)
Description
With a murder at its heart, Roberto Bolano's The Skating Rink is, among other things, a crime novel. Murder seems to have exerted a fascination for the endlessly talented Bolano, who in his last interview, according to The Observer, "declared, in all apparent seriousness, that what he would most like to have been was a homicide detective."Set in the seaside town of Z, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink is told in short, suspenseful chapters by three male narrators, and revolves around a beautiful figure skating champion, Nuria Martí. A ruined mansion, knife-wielding women, political corruption, sex, and jealousy all appear in this atmospheric chronicle of a single summer season in a seaside town, with its vacationers, businessmen, immigrants, bureaucrats, social workers, and drifters.
Product Details
Price
$14.95
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
February 28, 2011
Pages
182
Dimensions
5.3 X 0.55 X 8.06 inches | 0.5 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780811218689
BISAC Categories:
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About 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.
Chris Andrews was born in Newcastle, Australia, in 1962. He studied at the University of Melbourne and taught there, in the French program, from 1995 to 2008. He also taught at the University of Western Sydney, where he was a member of the Writing and Society Research Center. As well as translating nine books by Roberto Bolano and ten books (and counting) by César Aira, he also brought the French author Kaouther Adimi's Our Riches into English for New Directions. Andrews has won the Valle-Inclán Prize and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for his translations. Additionally, he has published the critical studies Poetry and Cosmogony: Science in the Writing of Queneau and Ponge and Roberto Bolano's Fiction: An Expanding Universe as well as two collections of poems, Cut Lunch and Lime Green Chair, for which he won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.
Reviews
This short, exquisite novel is another unlikely masterpiece, as sui generis as all his books so far...Bolano in The Skating Rink manages to honor genre conventions while simultaneously exploding them, creating a work of intense and unrealized longing. -- Wyatt Mason
One of the strangest mysteries...with its dark-summer heat that all but comes off the page. -- Marilis Hornidge
When I read Bolano, I think: everything is possible again....How he makes one laugh! The laughter of someone who just escaped being buried live, and suddenly remembers how badly she wants to live. -- Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love
Lucid fury . . . is a pretty good description of Bolano's aesthetic. He is a novelist of voraciousness without sentiment, hardness to a fever pitch. -- Todd Shy
A highly engaging novel of lyricism, menace and beauty. -- James Yeh
Darkly funny, but also tender and complex in the tenor of classic Bolano novels. -- Savannah ("Savvy") Jones
This is pure Bolaño.
This is pure Bolano.
This is pure Bolano. "
There is much intensity at work, although The Skating Rink leavens the melancholy of exile with an interest in the uncanny and a knack for the surrealist image. --Siddhartha Deb ""Books of the Year" ""
Exquisite . . . another unlikely masterpiece, as sui generis as all his books so far. The Skating Rink manages to honor genre conventions while simultaneously exploding them, creating a work of intense and unrealized longing. --Wyatt Mason"
One of the strangest mysteries...with its dark-summer heat that all but comes off the page. -- Marilis Hornidge
When I read Bolano, I think: everything is possible again....How he makes one laugh! The laughter of someone who just escaped being buried live, and suddenly remembers how badly she wants to live. -- Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love
Lucid fury . . . is a pretty good description of Bolano's aesthetic. He is a novelist of voraciousness without sentiment, hardness to a fever pitch. -- Todd Shy
A highly engaging novel of lyricism, menace and beauty. -- James Yeh
Darkly funny, but also tender and complex in the tenor of classic Bolano novels. -- Savannah ("Savvy") Jones
This is pure Bolaño.
This is pure Bolano.
This is pure Bolano. "
There is much intensity at work, although The Skating Rink leavens the melancholy of exile with an interest in the uncanny and a knack for the surrealist image. --Siddhartha Deb ""Books of the Year" ""
Exquisite . . . another unlikely masterpiece, as sui generis as all his books so far. The Skating Rink manages to honor genre conventions while simultaneously exploding them, creating a work of intense and unrealized longing. --Wyatt Mason"
