The Savage Detectives: A Novel Summary and Reviews

The Savage Detectives: A Novel
by Roberto Bolano

The Savage Detectives: A Novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: Roberto Bolano
Translator: Natasha Wimmer
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-03-04
ISBN: 0312427484
Number of pages: 672
Publisher: Picador

Book Reviews of The Savage Detectives: A Novel

Book Review: We're all Visceral Realists now
Summary: 5 Stars

Somebody had to break the strangle-hold that Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz and their imitators such as the dreary Isabelle Allende had on South American literature. Bolano succeeds brilliantly in a rough, bleak, funny and sexy picaresque tale of two poets, Ulisses Lima and Arturo Belano, and their lives in Mexico City in the 1970s and subsequent travels in Europe and Africa. The structure of the book is interesting: it begins with an account by a 17-year-old wannabe poet and his encounter with the rest of the gang. They end up fleeing Mexico City on New Year's Eve 1975 in a borrowed car. The main section consists of a series of interviews with people who encountered the two poets between then and 1996. The final part is an account of what happened on that road trip as they try to find Cesarea, a female poet, whose only known work is one short poem.
The bad news is that Bolano died in Blanes a couple of years ago, aged only 50. The good news is that there is quite a lot of his other stories, either translated or in translation.
Death to Magical Realism! We're all Visceral Realists now!

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