Last Evenings on Earth - Softcover

Bolaño, Roberto

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811216888 ISBN 13: 9780811216883

Publisher: New Directions, 2007

Synopsis

The first short-story collection in English by the acclaimed Chilean author Roberto Bolano. Winner of a 2005 PEN Translation Fund Award.

"The melancholy folklore of exile," as Roberto Bolano once put it, pervades these fourteen haunting stories. Bolano's narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and generally unlucky) quests, who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and to narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living in the margins, often coming to pieces, and sometimes, as in a nightmare, in constant flight from something horrid.

In the short story "Silva the Eye," Bolano writes in the opening sentence: "It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as The Eye, always tried to escape violence, even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around 20 years old when Salvador Allende died."

Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolano's beloved "failed generation," the stories of Last Evenings on Earth have appeared in The New Yorker and Grand Street.

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

“Complex and provocative.”
- International Herald Tribune

“His generation's premier Latin-American writer... Bolano's reputation and legend are in meteoric ascent.”
- Larry Rohter, The New York Times

“I am addicted to the haze that floats above Bolano's fiction.”
- Wayne Kostenbaum, Bookforum

“If you haven't heard of Roberto Bolano yet, you will soon.”
- Benjamin Lytal, The New York Sun

“Bolano's characters yearn for amnesia as well as for the ability to connect to someone or something in the present.”
- Stephanie Hanson, Los Angeles Times

“Brilliant.”
- Kirkus Reviews

“Conjures dreamlike worlds that shock with their familiarity.”
- Philip Herter, St. Petersburg Times

“Just behind the nervy, deadpan narrative a total breakdown perpetually looms.”
- Andersen Tepper, Village Voice

“The most influential and admired novelist of his generation in the Spanish-speaking world.”
- Susan Sontag

“Widely known in the Spanish-speaking world as the premier writer of his generation.”
- Dan Pope, Hartford Courant

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0811216888
• ISBN 13: 9780811216883
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256