The Secret of Evil - Hardcover

Bolaño, Roberto

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811218155 ISBN 13: 9780811218153

Publisher: New Directions, 2012

Synopsis

A collection that gathers everything Bolano was working on before his untimely death.

A North American journalist in Paris is woken at 4 a.m. by a mysterious caller with urgent information. For V. S. Naipaul the prevalence of sodomy in Argentina is a symptom of the nation’s political ills. Daniela de Montecristo (familiar to readers of Nazi Literature in the Americas and 2666) recounts the loss of her virginity. Arturo Belano returns to Mexico City and meets the last disciples of Ulises Lima, who play in a band called The Asshole of Morelos. Belano’s son Gerónimo disappears in Berlin during the Days of Chaos in 2005. Memories of a return to the native land. Argentine writers as gangsters. Zombie schlock as allegory...

The various pieces in the posthumous Secret of Evil extend the intricate, single web that is the work of Roberto Bolano.

About this title

About the Author:

Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolano (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed “by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time” (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),” and as “the real thing and the rarest” (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.

The poet Chris Andrews teaches at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, where he is a member of the Writing and Society Research Centre. He has translated books by Roberto Bolano and César Aira for New Directions. He has won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize for his poetry and the Valle-Inclan Prize for his translations.

Review:

Bolano has joined the immortals.

A once-in-a-blue-moon rhapsodic reading experience. --Johnathan Lethem

Bola o has joined the immortals.

Poetry is dangerous; that's the message.

Bola o was no political pamphleteer. And yet his characters' angst and desires play out against the canvas of history. With his raw, barely controlled emotions, and a talent for mining the pathos, beauty, and even humor amid the horror of ordinary life, his fiction soared. --Mac Margolis (04/16/2012)

Bola o succeeds in conjuring the unknowable empty spaces that an obsessive mind can imagine into the private lives of others.

Bolano was no political pamphleteer. And yet his characters' angst and desires play out against the canvas of history. With his raw, barely controlled emotions, and a talent for mining the pathos, beauty, and even humor amid the horror of ordinary life, his fiction soared. --Mac Margolis (04/16/2012)

One of those rare writers who write for a future time. We have only begun to appreciate his strange, oblique genius. --John Banville"

Bolano succeeds in conjuring the unknowable empty spaces that an obsessive mind can imagine into the private lives of others. "

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0811218155
• ISBN 13: 9780811218153
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192