The Skating Rink

Roberto Bolano

ISBN 10: 0330510525 / ISBN 13: 9780330510523

Published by Pan Macmillan, United Kingdom, London, 2010

About this Item

Rife with political corruption, sex, jealousy and frustrated passion, The Skating Rink is a darkly atmospheric chronicle of one summer season in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona. The story revolves around the beautiful figure skating champion Nuria Marti. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old mansion on the outskirts of town. What he doesn't tell her is that he paid for it using embezzled public funds; but such a betrayal is only the beginning and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene .Told in short suspenseful chapters by three alternating male narrators -- a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered, yet still romantic, itinerant poet, and a duplicitous local entrepreneur -- The Skating Rink is a wholly engrossing tale of murder and its motives. 'This short exquisite novel .manages to honor genre conventions while simultaneously exploding them, creating a work of intense and unrealized longing.' New York Times 'Bolano writes with such elegance, verve and style and is immensely readable' Guardian 'His fiction was hallucinatory, haunting and experimental' Times Literary Supplement 'Bolano has come close to re-imagining the novel' Independent 'His work is as vital, thrilling and life-enhancing as anything in modern fiction' Sunday Times 'Bolano has proved [literature] can do anything' Scotsman '[Bolano] made each book more ambitious so that it will take us many years to come to terms with his vast achievement' Colm Toibin 'He has the natural storyteller's gift -- but more important, he has the power to lend an extraordinary glamour to the activities of making love and making poetry' Edmund White 'Bolano was one of those rare writers who write for a future time, and we, especially we in the Anglophone world, have only begun to appreciate his strange, oblique genius' John Banville 'Readers who have snacked on a writer such as Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolano' Sunday Times 'It's no exaggeration to call Bolano a genius' Washington Post 'Bolano makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of vision on the world' Guardian. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Seller Inventory # GOR002247505

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Skating Rink
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan, United Kingdom, London
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0330510525
• ISBN 13: 9780330510523
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 322 grams

About this title

Synopsis

New Copy...Spine/Front/Back Covers Excellent...Crisp Clean Pages...No Highlighting No Markings No Shelf Wear

About the Author

Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (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 Bolaño and César Aira for New Directions.