Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix is dying. A priest, a member of Opus Dei, a literary critic and a poet, in his feverish delirium the crucial events of his past swell around him. From glimpses of the great poet Pablo Neruda, the German writer Ernst Junger and his one-time student, General Pinochet, to nightmarish flashes of falcons and falconers, the Chilean landscape and faces of those now dead, reality and imagination crowd and clamber in pursuit of the 'wizened youth' who still haunts Father Lacroix all these years later ...
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Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix is dying. A priest, a member of Opus Dei, a literary critic and a poet, in his feverish delirium the crucial events of his past swell around him. From glimpses of the great poet Pablo Neruda, the German writer Ernst Junger and his one-time student, General Pinochet, to nightmarish flashes of falcons and falconers, the Chilean landscape and faces of those now dead, reality and imagination crowd and clamber in pursuit of the 'wizened youth' who still haunts Father Lacroix all these years later. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS 'The wit, the horror, the ambition, the strangeness; Roberto Bola???o's work is a sprawling labyrinth of surprise, bold invention, and images that will live with you forever' Chris Power 'Few are the writers who have mastered the alchemy of turning the trivial into the sublime, the everyday into adventure. Bola???o is among the best at this diabolical skill' Georgi Gospodinov, author of Time Shelter
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Add this copy of By Night in Chile to cart. $10.64, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2024 by Picador USA.
Night in Chile by Robert Bolano is a spare and tightly written story that simultaneously explores the incestuous world of literary criticism in mid-20th Century South America and exposes the endemic acquiescence to facist terror that characterized many South American societies during that era. While the book is written in the first person as a priest's confession, it is really a confession of an entire society who let injustice and torture happen and pretended that every thing was alright as long as order reigned and private property was sacred. It is also a story about how people make compromises in their values in order to live the lives they choose. Bolano's writing reminded me of Saramago; so if you like Saramago, you will probably enjoy this book. Also, Bolano is particularly skilled in effectively using subtle suggestion rather than graphic exposition to create images that are at the same time clear yet shrouded, much like a pair of striking, emotional eyes peering out from behind a veil. It may be a trite message, which we all learned from our mothers, but at the end of this book one cannot help but be reminded that the person with whom you must live everyday of your life and who will judge your every act is, afterall, yourself.
