About this title: Ernest Hemingway once said that a good story was like an iceberg; what is visible is always smaller than the part that remains hidden beneath the water, which confers intensity, mystery, power and meaning on what floats on the surface. This is certainly true of the fourteen stories here, the first collection by the universally acclaimed Chilean author to be published in English. Imbued with 'the melancholy folklore of exile', as Roberto Bolano once put it, and set largely in the world of the Chilean diaspora in Central America and Europe, the narrators of these stories are usually writers ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Acceptable. May have wear or tear to spine, edges and or cover. Creases in spine. Bent/rounded corners. May have highlighting/notes. read more
Description: Very Good. 0811216888 Paperback, Condition: Very Good; this book is in very good condition with light curve to the spine / light reading creases to the covers. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: New Directions
Date Published: 2007-04-01
ISBN-13:9780811216883ISBN:0811216888
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780811216883. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: New Directions
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780811216883ISBN:0811216888
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: VINTAGE Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780099469421ISBN:0099469421
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 288 pages. A collection of fourteen stories set largely in the world of the chilean diaspora in central america and europe. (Paperback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions
Date Published: 2006-05-31
ISBN-13:9780811216340ISBN:0811216349
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780811216340. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780811216340ISBN:0811216349
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: VINTAGE Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9781843431817ISBN:1843431815
Description: BRAND NEW HARDBACK. 288 pages. A collection of fourteen stories by the acclaimed chilean author. set largely in the world of the chilean diaspora in central america and europe, the narrators of these stories are usually writers grappling with private quests who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witness to a crime. (Hardback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New Directions Books, New York City, NY
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780811216340ISBN:0811216349
Description: Hardcover. First Edition. First Printing. 184 pages. As New in As New Dust Jacket. The author's first collection of short stories to be translated into English. Now considered a contemporary classic. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Presents fourteen short stories narrated in the first person by a sweet cacophony of diverse voices. A few are narrated by an author named "B" (who is, of ... read more
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: NEW DIRECTIONS
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780811216883ISBN:0811216888
Description: New. "The melancholy folklore of exile, " as Roberto Bolano once put it, pervades these 14 haunting stories--the first short-story collection in English by acclaimed Chilean author Roberto Bolano. read more
"Roberto Bolano's 14 short stories in this collection are beautiful, concise, poetic ("When it was starting to look as if we had wasted the night, a curious night in the course of which we had hardly exchanged a word, we saw him, or thought we did, walking down a dimly lit street. My friend honked the horn and executed a reckless U-turn. Ramirez was waiting for us quietly on a corner. I rolled down the window and said hello. My friend leaned over in front of me and invited him to get in. The boy climbed into the car without a word. I remember the rest of the night as festive. Irrationally festive. It was if we were celebrating the birthday of the young man in the backseat. As if we were his parents. As if we were his pimps. Or his minders: two sad white Mexicans protecting an enigmatic Indian compatriot. We laughed. We drank and laughed and everyone left us alone, sensing that to make fun of us would have been to risk life and limb." from the story "Dentist")
A Jack Kerouac "Wow." This is heady, good, rich stuff. Such a pleasure to read in this 2006 translation. I don't read/speak Spanish so I have to go with this and it is really really amazing. Add to your list to read, if you haven't discovered it already! I will be revisiting Bolano's amazing "Last Evenings on Earth," both as a reader and as a writer."
"Bolano's like the smart kid in class- not the annoying one that always has their hand raised, but someone who'd give you the answer on a test, suggest what books better cover the subject matter, and toss off a comment on the teacher's feeble attempt at humor and forlorn plaid blazer. That is, if he bothered to go to school at all that day. This is a topnotch collection of tales, conveying the daring and uncertain passions of youth, the dull chagrin over lost and wasted years, and the odd calamity that is exile- all captured with pointed, graceful strokes. It's a bit like the really savory stuff of Savage Detectives, without all of the heft."
"I struggled through the first half of this book in ways similar to my attempt with Savage Detectives. It took an extreme effort to concentrate on the stories and stay focused. By the second half of the book I started to settle in with the stories and enjoyed reading some of the them. Bolano was clearly a talented writer but I seem to have difficulty getting into his flow. I don't know if it was his style or the translation, but to me his work reads like giant blocks of text divided into short, choppy segments. Nonetheless, despite my problems with his writing style, I was glad I read the book. Getting through it was work but like most jobs, at the end of the day you feel like you've accomplished something."
"...beautiful short stories by this great writer - more often than in 'the savage detectives' he embeds a plot which often springs on the reader, gently pounces, though many of the stories also simply meander, with his patented genius for speaking to us in a conversational tone thick with events recounted in a single line which could amount to a whole story in themselves...the simple power of telling a story with so little (seeming) artifice...'and then this happened, and then this, and then this, and they met, and they made love, and then he died, and she moved to california, and then barcelona'...bolano mysterious ability to be spellbinding without any surface acrobatics and pyrotechnics is a kind of quiet melancholy which is maybe the most universal human sentiment of anyone who feels..."
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