Bøger af Roberto Bolano

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.

The Savage Detectives is an exuberant, raunchy, wildly inventive, and ambitious novel from one of the greatest Latin American authors of our age. National BestsellerNew Year's Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, founders of the visceral realist movement in poetry, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest: to track down the obscure, vanished poet Cesárea Tinajero. A violent showdown in the Sonora desert turns search to flight; twenty years later Belano and Lima are still on the run.The explosive first long work by "the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time" (Ilan Stavans, Los Angeles Times), The Savage Detectives follows Belano and Lima through the eyes of the people whose paths they cross in Central America, Europe, Israel, and West Africa. This chorus includes the muses of visceral realism, the beautiful Font sisters; their father, an architect interned in a Mexico City asylum; a sensitive young follower of Octavio Paz; a foul-mouthed American graduate student; a French girl with a taste for the Marquis de Sade; the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky; a Chilean stowaway with a mystical gift for numbers; the anorexic heiress to a Mexican underwear empire; an Argentinian photojournalist in Angola; and assorted hangers-on, detractors, critics, lovers, employers, vagabonds, real-life literary figures, and random acquaintances.A polymathic descendant of Borges and Pynchon, Roberto Bolaño traces the hidden connection between literature and violence in a world where national boundaries are fluid and death lurks in the shadow of the avant-garde. The Savage Detectives is a dazzling original, the first great Latin American novel of the twenty-first century.

Considered the "big bang" of Roberto Bolaño's universe, Antwerp is his first novel--or perhaps the shattered remnants of one. Written when he was just twenty-seven years of age, it was so intensely solitary, so strange, that he didn't share it with any publishers at the time; yet, decades later, he called it the only novel that didn't embarrass him. It proceeds in hallucinatory sketches: a deserted highway, a seaside campground, an abandoned hotel room; a tryst, an interrogation, a murder; and somewhere, just beyond reach, a young, fevered writer named Roberto Bolaño drifts in and out of view. A haunting, radical, and utterly singular effort by a burgeoning genius, Antwerp is an essential part of Bolaño's oeuvre.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CHRIS POWER 'A master of the short form' IndependentWide-ranging, suggestive, and ever-daring, Roberto Bolaño's short stories map out the dark terrain that he would go on to explore in his novellas and epic novels. From melancholic portraits of exile and its folklore to a rogue's gallery of desperate characters futilely attempting to unearth the animating secrets of the world, each of Bolaño's short fictions adds yet another door, a window, a secret passage onto the sinister, eerie universe that Bolaño brought to life across his body of work. Bringing together Last Evenings on Earth, The Return and The Insufferable Gaucho, as well as Bolaño's posthumously published stories, this new book marks the first time these fictions have been collected in one edition, allowing for a major reappraisal of the vital place that the short story commands for Bolaño's literary legacy. 'Roberto Bolaño was a flat-out genius, one of the greatest writers of our time' Paul Auster'Roberto Bolaño was a game changer: his field was politics, poetry and melancholia . . . and his writing was always unparalleled' Mariana Enríquez

A tale of bohemian youth on the make in Mexico City from a master of contemporary fiction, and a sublime precursor to The Savage Detectives. 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 head-first into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city's labyrinthine streets, rundown cafes, and murky bathhouses. The Spirit of Science Fiction is a kaleidoscopic work of strange and tender beauty, and a fitting introduction for readers uninitiated into the thrills of Roberto Bolaño's fiction. It is an indispensable addition to an ecstatic and transgressive body of work.

'The best and weirdest kind of literary game' - Financial TimesFeaturing several mass-murdering authors, two fraternal writers at the head of a football-hooligan ring and a poet who crafts his lines in the air with sky writing, Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas details the lives of a rich cast of characters from one of the most extraordinary imaginations in world literature.Written with sharp wit and virtuosic flair, this encyclopaedic group of fictional pan-American authors is the terrifyingly humorous and remarkably inventive masterpiece which made Bolaño famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo lies in hospital, hiccupping himself to death. When the doctors struggle to offer a diagnosis, his wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud, the mesmerist and reclusive bachelor Pierre Pain. Pain, in love and eager to impress, agrees to help. But on a night that 'smells of something strange', things soon go awry... A wonderfully oneiric novella that blends the finest of Edgar Allan Poe with Jorge Luis Borges and Bolano's truly astonishing alchemical gifts, Monsieur Pain is a gripping noir conspiracy as rich as it is strange. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'A surrealist nightmare, with overtones of Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler' The TimesThis marvellous little yarn is dark, mysterious and rich in surprises... If you have yet to enter the daringly kaleidoscopic labyrinth that is Roberto Bolano's imagination, this is a lively place to begin what will be quite an experience' Irish Times

Three fiercely original tales. An unexpected treasure from the vault of a revolutionary talent. Roberto Bolaño's boundless gift for shaping the chaos of reality into fiction is unmistakable across these three novellas. In 'Cowboy Graves,' Arturo Belano - Bolaño's alter ego - returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism. 'French Comedy of Horrors' finds a seventeen-year-old recruited into a secret society of artists in the sewers of Paris. And in 'Fatherland,' a young poet reckons with the fascist overthrow of his country, as the woman he is obsessed with disappears in the ensuing violence. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER'His work is as vital, thrilling and life-enhancing as anything in modern fiction' Sunday Times'Fascinating... A rare opportunity for the reader to witness the creation of a seemingly inexhaustible body of work' El Pais

Auxilio Lacouture is trapped. For twelve days she hides alone in a lavatory on the fourth floor of her university. Staring at the floor, she begins a heartfelt and feverish tale: she is the Mother of Mexican poetry. A highly charged first-person semi-hallucinatory novella, Amulet is a potent stream of consciousness through which the poets of Mexico rage and swirl. Filled with wild, dark literary prophecies, heroic poets, mad poets, artists 'choked by the brilliance of youth', Auxilio's passionate narration - both heartbreaking and lyrical - is suffused with the essence of Roberto Bolaño's art. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'Encapsulates the violence and tragedy of recent Latin American history' The Times'Roberto Bolaño redefined the form of the novel in his masterpiece 2666; with the hallucinatory narrative of Amulet, he reimagines what literature can become' New Statesman

'Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime'So begins Bianca's tale of growing up the hard way. Orphaned overnight as a teenager, she drops out of school and drifts into the bad company of two criminals her brother brings home. As the four of them plot a fantastical crime, Bianca learns she can drift even lower... Electric and tense with foreboding, A Little Lumpen Novelita - one of the last novellas Roberto Bolaño published - delivers a fractured fairy tale of taking control of one's fate. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER'Bolaño has proven that literature can do everything' The New York Times'The man was a flat-out genius, one of the greatest writers of our time' Paul Auster

"Extraordinary . . . [Bolaño's] greatest work." -James Wood, The New York Times The book that catapulted Roberto Bolaño into international literary stardom, By Night in Chile is the final testimony of Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix-Chilean priest and member of Opus Dei, eminent literary critic and failed poet-as he is haunted by a shadowy figure from his past. In Urrutia's feverish last hours, a deluge of memories pours from him: of hobnobbing with Santiago's most unctuous literati; of undertaking a mission to save Europe's decaying cathedrals from existential threat by pigeon excrement; of retreating into Greco-Roman poetry during the darkest chapter of modern Chilean history; of tutoring Augusto Pinochet in Marxist theory, so that the General may better understand his enemies. Throughout he insists, with fracturing conviction, that he was always on the right side of history. A novel about high art and fascism, silence and complicity, and, ultimately, the weight of damnation, Roberto Bolaño's By Night in Chile is a deep-cutting satire and a work of devastating moral insight.

"Dark, intimate and sneakily touching . . . There is gold to be found in [The Return]." -Michael Greenberg, The New York Times Book ReviewComposed of thirteen indelible stories, Roberto Bolaño's The Return is preoccupied with ghosts: troubled souls haunting society's margins, lovers lost to the ages, young men who no longer recognize themselves in the mirror, fresh corpses afforded no peace, departed poets who visit us in dreams. These tales capture the extremes of human experience-sex, violence, death-and the mundane acts that linger in between, with Bolaño's inimitable mordant humor and trenchant insight into what drives us. A master of the short form, Bolaño is as interested in the act of storytelling as he is in the stories themselves: how they nestle within one another; how they shift, spread, and scatter; and how they return to us again and again.

When Oscar Amalfitano begins an affair with one of his students, he has no idea where it will lead. More than his turbulent revolutionary past, or the death of his beautiful wife, the scandalous exposure of this relationship will change him for ever. Forced to flee Barcelona with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amalfitano finds himself in Santa Teresa, a sprawling, mythical town on the Mexico-US border, populated by mysterious characters and haunted by dark tales of murdered women. Returning to the the world and characters of 2666, Bolaño's masterpiece, Woes of the True Policeman explores the the power of art, memory and desire - and marks a kaleidoscopic, lyrical and darkly humorous last act in one of the great oeuvres of world literature. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER'Hallucinatory, manic, fearful, comic... Bolaño must be read by anyone who loves the novel' Herald'We savour all he has written as every offering is a portal into the elaborate terrain of his genius' Patti Smith

War-games champion Udo Berger is finally on holiday. Travelling to the Costa Brava with his long-ignored girlfriend, Ingeborg, there they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, and a band of shady locals. They have fun, see the sights, relax. Then, late one night, Charly disappears without a trace. Desperate to solve the mystery, Udo refuses to leave, even after Ingeborg returns home. Increasingly frightened, the situation slips beyond his grasp and Udo suddenly realizes that the consequences of this 'game' are much more serious than he ever imagined. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER'Capering, weird, rascally and short... The Third Reich is giddily funny, but it is also prickly and bizarre enough to count among Bolaño's first-rate efforts' The Economist'A mesmerizing tale: sleek, linear, easily digested, beautifully translated... Classic Bolaño' Washington Post

Dropped from the Olympic figure skating team, Nuria Martí's fate pivots her into a world of corruption, jealousy - and revenge. Cushioning her fall from grace, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old masion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn't tell her is he paid for it using public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene. Narrated by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous civil servant, The Skating Rink is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'A work of intense and unrealized longing' The New York Times'Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world' Guardian

'In this neighbourhood, only the dead go out for a walk'... A young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor, only to watch his soul departing his body. Two embittered police detectives debate their favourite weapons. A violent man looks back on his childhood and seeks out the now-aged male porn actor his mother shot movies with. Here is the eagerly anticipated second volume of stories by Roberto Bolaño. Tender or etched in acid; hazily suggestive or chillingly definitive: The Return is a trove of strangely arresting short master works. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'Dark, intimate and sneakily touching... There is gold to be found in this collection' New York Review of Books'Each tale turns the reader into a voyeur, grasping at snapshots of troubled lives and ghosts' Observer 'A compelling encapsulation of Bolaño's work... You won't be bored' Los Angeles Times

'If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear...'A rat policeman comes to the startling realisation that each rat is out for themselves. An elderly judge gives up his job in the city for an improbable return to the family farm in the Pampas. An elusive film-maker and the little-known Argentinian novelist whose work he's plagiarized for years, finally fall into confrontation. Unpredictable and daring, highly controlled and yet somehow haywire, the five short stories included in The Insufferable Gaucho are some of Roberto Bolaño's best. In addition, two essays are included: provocative and often scathing, they too are alive with Bolaño's trademark humour, violence and utter faith in the power of the written word. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'An exemplary literary rebel' New York Review of Books'A master of the short form' Independent'Bolaño wrote with the high-voltage first-person braininess of a Saul Bellow and an extreme subversive vision of his own' New York Times

'A fascinating, even compulsory addition to the Bolaño fan's bookshelf' - Daily TelegraphAntwerp was Roberto Bolaño's first novel, though he chose not to publish it until 2002, more than twenty years after he'd written it. Set amidst the seedy hotels and deserted campsites on the Costa Brava, and filled with hapless girls, failed poets, and shifty policemen, Antwerp is a short and cinematic experimental crime novel spliced together with voices from a dream, from a nightmare, from passers-by, from an omniscient narrator, from 'Roberto Bolaño'. Intense and irrepressible, the novel is a personal declaration of the power of literature; reading it is to be present at the birth of Bolaño's enterprise in prose, to see the beginning, to witness the moment when his talent explodes.

Santa Teresa, on the Mexico-US border: an urban sprawl that draws lost souls to it like a vortex. Convicts and academics find themselves here, as does an American sportswriter, a teenage student with her widowed father, and a reclusive, 'missing' author. But, there is a darker side to the town. Girls and women are disappearing at an alarming rate. As a sense of conspiracy grows and an apocalyptic shadow draws closer, the corruption, violence and decadence of twentieth-century history reveals itself in a novel of an astonishing scale and burning intensity. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER'A landmark in what's possible for the novel. Bolaño has proven it can do anything' New York Times'Wondrous... Unforgettable...will resonate for years to come' Daily Telegraph'As riveting as any top-notch thriller... 2666 achieves something extremely rare in fiction: it provides an all-encompassing view of our world' Sunday Times

On New Year's Eve ,1975, two hunted men leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest: to track down the vanished poet Cesárea Tinajero. But, twenty years later they are still on the run.The Savage Detectives is their remarkable journey through our darkening universe. Told, shared and mythologised by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, their testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of all time.

An unnamed narrator attempts to piece together the life and works of an enigmatic would-be poet turned military assassin during Pinochet's regime in Chile.