The first UK publication of the brilliant and innovative work that made Bolaño the most admired Spanish writer of his generation
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Review
'an extraordinary fantasia.' --The Independent
'Neither a novel nor a collection of stories, Nazi Literature in the Americas is the best and weirdest kind of literary game...Nazi Literature in the Americas is a chamber piece when compared with the proliferating grandeur of 2666 but it's a perfect example of this writer's unique mix of sincerity, humour, misdirection and occasional madness. This artful alternate history of modern literature, stitched together from loose ends, half-told stories and deft episodes of pastiche, is a strangely profound place to get lost.' -- Financial Times
'Bolaño's impressive novel triumphs by displaying a power of imagination and a quiddity we are not inclined to allow any of his imaginary writers.' --Observer
'Nazi Literature in the Americas, an encyclopedia of fictional right-wing writers, is not only Bolaño's most openly comic book but it is also his most explicit treatment of a theme that recurs with obsessive frequency throughout his entire fictional work - the complicity of the literary establishment in Latin America with political power...Nazi Literature in the Americas at first seems strangely anomalous for a Bolaño novel...But it is typical in one way: the humorous lightness of the writing belies depths of satirical complexity and agonized self-examination.' --Sunday Telegraph
'Mordantly funny and inventive writing from a real virtuoso.'
--Waterstone's Books Quarterly
'Extremely funny... Against a backdrop of dictatorship and terror, this is black humour indeed.'
--Evening Standard
'One of the most ingenious pieces of fiction since Bolaño's 2666.' --Shortlist
'Novel of the Week.' --The Week
'It is a darkly comic celebration of the wilder horizons of writing, good, plodding, lunatic and terrible.'
--LRB
'In description, it sounds like satire and is has a dryness which could easily be mistaken for ironic humour. In fact, Bolaño's intentions are more sophisticated than that... Nazi Literature in the Americas takes what Bolaño knew very well and sends it through the looking glass of the ideological divide.' --Philip Hensher, Observer
'Neither a novel nor a collection of stories, Nazi Literature in the Americas is the best and weirdest kind of literary game...Nazi Literature in the Americas is a chamber piece when compared with the proliferating grandeur of 2666 but it's a perfect example of this writer's unique mix of sincerity, humour, misdirection and occasional madness. This artful alternate history of modern literature, stitched together from loose ends, half-told stories and deft episodes of pastiche, is a strangely profound place to get lost.' -- Financial Times
'Bolaño's impressive novel triumphs by displaying a power of imagination and a quiddity we are not inclined to allow any of his imaginary writers.' --Observer
'Nazi Literature in the Americas, an encyclopedia of fictional right-wing writers, is not only Bolaño's most openly comic book but it is also his most explicit treatment of a theme that recurs with obsessive frequency throughout his entire fictional work - the complicity of the literary establishment in Latin America with political power...Nazi Literature in the Americas at first seems strangely anomalous for a Bolaño novel...But it is typical in one way: the humorous lightness of the writing belies depths of satirical complexity and agonized self-examination.' --Sunday Telegraph
'Mordantly funny and inventive writing from a real virtuoso.'
--Waterstone's Books Quarterly
'Extremely funny... Against a backdrop of dictatorship and terror, this is black humour indeed.'
--Evening Standard
'One of the most ingenious pieces of fiction since Bolaño's 2666.' --Shortlist
'Novel of the Week.' --The Week
'It is a darkly comic celebration of the wilder horizons of writing, good, plodding, lunatic and terrible.'
--LRB
'In description, it sounds like satire and is has a dryness which could easily be mistaken for ironic humour. In fact, Bolaño's intentions are more sophisticated than that... Nazi Literature in the Americas takes what Bolaño knew very well and sends it through the looking glass of the ideological divide.' --Philip Hensher, Observer
Book Description
Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as an encyclopaedia of extremely right-wing writers. Composed of short biographies of imaginary pan-American authors (the nations with the most representatives are Argentina, with eight, and the USA, with seven), Nazi Literature describes, in fourteen thematic sections, the writers’ lives, politics, and literary works. It includes bibliographies, cross-references, and an epilogue (‘For Monsters’). Although the writers are invented, they are all carefully and credibly situated in real literary worlds: his characters encounter Allen Ginsberg, Octavio Paz, and Lezama Lima. Remarkably inventive, chilling, and witty, Nazi Literature in the Americas offers keen insights into the workings of an extraordinarily fecund literary imagination.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By F. Roberts
Format:Hardcover
I bought both 2666 and THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES three years before I actually dared read them. The sheer size was terrifying. Finally - thank God - I summoned up the courage and took them on. When I finished 2666 I almost wept to think that would be no new Bolanos.
Well here`s Bolano for Beginners. Everything Bolano apart from terrifying size : wit, melodrama, horror, history, brilliant characterisation, fake erudition, satire. Part Nabokov`s PALE FIRE, part Borges, part Spinrad`s IRON DREAM Iron Dream (Panther science fiction), part Michael Moorcock`s BYZANTIUM/JERUSALEM novels Byzantium Endures: Between the Wars Vol. 1, but wholly Bolano. Read this, it`ll take a couple of hours, get a taste of the genius, then get on to the hard stuff.
Well here`s Bolano for Beginners. Everything Bolano apart from terrifying size : wit, melodrama, horror, history, brilliant characterisation, fake erudition, satire. Part Nabokov`s PALE FIRE, part Borges, part Spinrad`s IRON DREAM Iron Dream (Panther science fiction), part Michael Moorcock`s BYZANTIUM/JERUSALEM novels Byzantium Endures: Between the Wars Vol. 1, but wholly Bolano. Read this, it`ll take a couple of hours, get a taste of the genius, then get on to the hard stuff.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Mr. S. D. Mcginty
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This book has an odd coherence. It consists of a number of fictional autobiographies, separate lives, of American writers with fascistic tendencies. It weaves them together, or some of them at least, but not in a way that suggests the historiography of the conventional novel. You don't feel an arc, and you don't get a sense of evolution. You get what you are given: dry, but often very poetic and furthermore witty vignettes: a series of bizarre lives, lived in a kind of tragicomic apolitical vacuum. Bolano does not induce the reader to deride the politics of his protagonists, but he does undercut them constaly, obliquely, by taking sharp jabs at their humanity, their conflicted motivations and their consuming passions.
It's an odd book that swings from bathos to pathos and back again, and worth it for the odd and unique experience.
It's an odd book that swings from bathos to pathos and back again, and worth it for the odd and unique experience.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By J. Cameron-Smith
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
At first glance, this book does not appear to be a novel. Instead, it looks like a collection of richly detailed obituaries and bibliographic notes. These could be real people - and that is Bolaño's point entirely. What we read here as fiction could well be representative of literature in an alternate world. While some of the characters depicted are outlandish, others are unsettlingly plausible. Those of us with limited knowledge of 20th century literature in the Americas could well accept fiction as truth, at least for a while.
Fortunately, if you follow the biographical details of the authors carefully, it becomes clear that what could be fact is definitely fiction. While this is a relief, by that stage in the book the possibility of fact has emerged and I found myself wondering about the power of fiction and the role of literature in politics.
The most unsettling of the entries is `The Infamous Ramírez Hoffman'. This is a far longer entry and refers as well to a character named Bolaño who is asked to identify Ramírez Hoffman, a Chilean poet who had been employed by Pinochet's death squads. Here, for a moment at least, the line between fact and fiction is blurred. By introducing himself as a character, Roberto Bolaño grounds this novel in a way which is a confronting reminder of a political reality. And so, neatly, the circle is closed.
Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was a Chilean poet and novelist. This is the first of his books I have read. It was first published in Spanish in 1996 and in English in 2008. I will be seeking out his other novels.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Fortunately, if you follow the biographical details of the authors carefully, it becomes clear that what could be fact is definitely fiction. While this is a relief, by that stage in the book the possibility of fact has emerged and I found myself wondering about the power of fiction and the role of literature in politics.
The most unsettling of the entries is `The Infamous Ramírez Hoffman'. This is a far longer entry and refers as well to a character named Bolaño who is asked to identify Ramírez Hoffman, a Chilean poet who had been employed by Pinochet's death squads. Here, for a moment at least, the line between fact and fiction is blurred. By introducing himself as a character, Roberto Bolaño grounds this novel in a way which is a confronting reminder of a political reality. And so, neatly, the circle is closed.
Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was a Chilean poet and novelist. This is the first of his books I have read. It was first published in Spanish in 1996 and in English in 2008. I will be seeking out his other novels.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Just when I was beginning to get tired of the recent glut of...
... comes a premise too weird/good to resist: an invented encyclopaedia of make-believe fascist/Nazi writers; a series of biographical sketches/ compressed life stories of... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Andrew Sutherland
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bolaño's homage to Borges
'Nazi Literature in America' is probably best understood as Bolaño's homage to Borges - the young Borges of the ' Historia universal de la infamia', with its concocted... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Paul Bowes
2.0 out of 5 stars
Strange effort
This is an odd book that presents a series of biographical accounts of fictional right wing authors in Latin America. Each chapter presents a figure, with sketchy detail. Read more
Published 18 months ago by R. Lawson
2.0 out of 5 stars
All skin and no banana
This is basically a concept novel. Well, I say "novel". This is basically a concept selection of thematically-linked short stories, many of which are so similar that two days... Read more
Published 19 months ago by S. Pollard
3.0 out of 5 stars
Imaginative and humourous but way short of The Savage Detectives...
This collection of 30 odd " hagliographies"(obituaries of fictitious Pan American writers of the 20th Century) gives Bolano enormous scope for his imagination but perhaps due to my... Read more
Published on 13 Nov 2010 by Kiwifunlad
2.0 out of 5 stars
different
Convincly recreated biographies of imagined South American Natzi authors. This book takes magic realism and pushes it in a new profound direction. Quite hard to read.
Published on 24 Sep 2010 by pete
3.0 out of 5 stars
Witty, if puzzling
An odd book: ostensibly a collection of mischieviously sniping obituaries there is nevertheless an underlying thread linking all the characters, eventually forming a "sort of"... Read more
Published on 17 Aug 2010 by Kevin Roche
2.0 out of 5 stars
Just clever. But not interesting.
I think it was an intellectual vanity that drew me to this book. I have read a little Jorge Luis Borges and I liked the idea of a fictional but coherent and self-contained world. Read more
Published on 4 July 2010 by F. Pearson
2.0 out of 5 stars
Don't judge a book by its cover (or title).
I got this book on the basis of its name alone. There's something about putting the word "Nazi" in the title that probably intrigues people since it's one of the last taboos. Read more
Published on 28 May 2010 by untitled no. 4
4.0 out of 5 stars
Seductively plausible
Bolano offers up what appears to be a collection of articles about fascist-leaning writers, all of whom he has imagined (although there are references to real events and people... Read more
Published on 21 May 2010 by Alan Hansen
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