Product Description

During the course of a single night, Fatherr 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. He believes he is dying and in his feverish delirium various characters, both real and imaginary, appear to him as icy monsters, as if in sequences from a horror film. Thus we are given glimpses of the great poet Pablo Neruda, the German writer Ernst Junger, General Pinochet, whom Father Lacroix instructs in Marxist doctrine, as well as various members of the Chilean intelligentsia whose lives, during a period of political turbulence, have touched upon his.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14680 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Juan A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia
"In By Night in Chile Bolaño has created a true masterpiece that will remain one of the key readings of contemporary literature."

Miguel García-Posada, El País
"Bolaño… the brightest literary star in the current Latin American panorama."

About the Author
Roberto Bolano was born in Santiago, Chile in 1953 and died in Catalonia in 2003. He was widely regarded as the essential Latin American writers of our age. He was best known for his novels (including The Savage Detectives, which won a number of prestigious literaryawards, Nocturno de Chile, translated as By Night in Chile, Amulet, and 2666) and his short stories, Last Evenings on Earth.

Customer Reviews

A novel of truly international stature
Forget Isabel Allende - Roberto Bolano's casutic, brilliant, satirical novel is far and away the best thing produced by a Chilean author since Neruda's lyrical poetry.

This short, haunting novel is narrated by a Chilean priest and sometime literary critic on what he takes to be the last night of his life. It is filled with strange cameo experiences, surreal memories (such as teaching Marxism to Pinochet and his junta), and is also deeply memorable for the way it unpicks the "normality" of the years of the Chilean military government, and unmasks the brutality which lay beneath the veneer.

Through Chile's particular story, Bolano achieves a truly global theme - that of how the sordid, terrible, brutal suffocation of the world's dispossessed goes on all the time while "normal life" continues. In doing so, he also takes hilarious sidesweeps at Catholic Chile, at the Chilean literarty establishment, and at literary conventions.

The brilliant reviews in the Spanish press were richly deserved - go out and buy this book and introduce yourself to a new master of international fiction; someone whose short novel masks prodigious range and brilliance - streets ahead of anything by contemporary British authors.

Enigmatic
Some people may be put off by this short novel, after all it is only two paragraphs long the last paragraph being only one sentence; indeed strictly speaking this is a monologue.

Father Sebastian Urritia Lacroix thinking that he is dying spends a sleepless night going over his life. Lacroix is more than just a priest he is a poet, a critic on literature and, a member of Opus Dei. As we follow his story we are taken into a world of the Chilean intelligentsia, the critics, poets and novelists of his life. His reminisences take in before the rise of Pinochet through to his downfall and beyond. From his trip to Europe to look at the preservation of churches ( with lots of priests taking up falconry), to teaching Pinochet and his Junta the principles of Marxist theory Father Lacroix has led an interesting life. From being touched up by another male to attending parties with other intelligentsia whilst tortures are commited on a lower floor of the building, Lacroix has seen a lot. Lacroix's tale is told through conventional narrative as well as surrealism and dream sequences.

This book won't appeal to everyone but it is well worth reading. At only a 130 pages long it doesn't take that long to read, however there is a lot in it to keep you more than interested. In all, this book is an absorbing and thoughful look at the recent history of Chile through all its turmoils.