The Secret of Evil
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A collection that gathers everything Bolano was working on before his untimely death.
A North American journalist in Paris is woken at 4 a.m. by a mysterious caller with urgent information. For V. S. Naipaul the prevalence of sodomy in Argentina is a symptom of the nation’s political ills. Daniela de Montecristo (familiar to readers of Nazi Literature in the Americas and 2666) recounts the loss of her virginity. Arturo Belano returns to Mexico City and meets the last disciples of Ulises Lima, who play in a band called The Asshole of Morelos. Belano’s son Gerónimo disappears in Berlin during the Days of Chaos in 2005. Memories of a return to the native land. Argentine writers as gangsters. Zombie schlock as allegory...
The various pieces in the posthumous Secret of Evil extend the intricate, single web that is the work of Roberto Bolano.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This engaging posthumous collection from the prolific Chilean novelist and poet Bola o (2666) comprises the (largely unedited) vignettes, short stories, and speeches found on the author's computer at the time of his death in 2003. Characters and themes from his novels reappear in these stories: from The Savage Detectives's Arturo Belano, to musings on the state of Latin American literature, to the lives of tortured artists, including a disappeared British musician and a group of intellectuals in Paris caught in a "complex and subtle web of relations." Bola o's quiet, sparse prose is punctuated by moments of eruptive violence, including terrifying scenes from a disturbingly autobiographical "B-grade schlock" zombie film, or a journalist covering a gruesome murder, imagining herself in the victim's stead. Bola o crafts characters isolated from their surroundings and compellingly observing the humanity around them a teenager "dissatisfied with everything" in his life stays up late and listens to his upstairs neighbors having sex in "Colonia Lindavista," while a recovering heroin addict spends his days observing beachgoers "with silent tears running down his face" in "Beach." As the narrator of the titular story declares, his tale is "incomplete, because stories like this don't have an ending;" nevertheless, Bola o's writing is reliably intriguing.
Customer Reviews
El Secreto del Mal
Genial, por favor todo Bolaño en castellano.