The Spirit of Science Fiction

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. A poet and novelist, he has been acclaimed "by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time" (The Los Angeles Times), and as "the real thing and the rarest" (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He is widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. His books include The Savage Detectives, 2666, By Night in Chile, Distant Star, Last Evenings on Earth, and The Romantic Dogs.

With words alone, Bolaño summons a visual world, creating in this book, as in his others, what Mario Vargas Llosa has called images and fantasies for posterity admirers will find in these themes and players a satisfying proleptic glimpse of his picaresque masterpiece, 1998 s The Savage Detectives [This] gem-choked puzzle of a book serves as a key to Bolano s later work, unlocking clues to his abiding obsessions [and] is a hardy forerunner that stands on its own. The New York Times Book Review

[Bolaño] is a kinetic, epiphanic writer, and even his earliest works tremble like a whirring, unpredictable machine. . . The Spirit of Science Fiction functions as a kind of key to the jeweled box of Bolaño s fictions, an index of the images that would come to obsess him. . . . longtime Bolaño fans will doubtless enjoy this familiar cocktail of sorrow and ecstasy. Paris Review

An entertaining, lyrical and accomplished novel. Wall Street Journal

A fascinating blueprint of Bolaño s poetics and of the extent to which he drew from the Beat literature of William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac . . . it also has achingly beautiful passages, and its lessons about the reach of American policy resonate to this day. A superbly talented young man wrote it, in 1984, believing that truth reached through art was the only means to revolution. In this sense, it reads like a dispatch from beyond the grave. The New Yorker
 
This is vintage Bolaño: a lusty and rapturous shaggy-dog tale of Latin American exiles and bohemian youth. Vanityfair.com

An unusual pleasure to read. You can almost feel Bolaño shaking out his limbs. . . It's a joy to watch such a brilliant stylist practice his moves, and to see such a brilliant mind expand on the page.   NPR

An impressionistic and prescient treasure. Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture, Top Reads for February

A minor gem. . . Bolaño s lusty, laughing passion for art and literature, for women and Mexico City, is