The Savage Detectives [Paperback]

"An utterly unique achievement--a modern epic rich in character and event. . . . [He is] the most important writer to emerge from Latin America since Garcia Marquez."--"San Francisco"" Chronicle"""

"My favorite writer . . . "The Savage Detectives "is an ark bearing all the strange salvage of poetry and youth from catastrophes past and those yet to come."--Nicole Krauss, author of "The History ""of Love"

""The Savage Detectives" is deeply satisfying. . . . Bolano's book throws down a great, clunking, formal gauntlet to his readers' conventional expectations. . . . A very good novel."--Thomas McGonigle, "Los Angeles"" Times"

"One of the most respected and influential writers of [his] generation . . . At once funny and vaguely, pervasively, frightening."--John Banville, "The Nation"

"A bizarre and mesmerizing novel . . . It's a lustful story--lust for sex, lust for self, lust for the written word."--"Esquire"

"Roberto Bolano's masterwork, at last translated into English, confirms this Chilean's status as Latin America's literary enfant terrible."--"Vogue"

"Combustible . . . A glittering, tumbling diamond of a book . . . When you are done with this book, you will believe there is no engine more powerful than the human voice."--Emily Carter Roiphe, "Star Tribune "(Minneapolis)"" "An exuberantly sprawling, politically charged picaresque novel."--"Elle""" "Wildly enjoyable . . . Bolano beautifully manages to keep his comedy and his pathos in the same family.""--The New York Times Book Review"

`The novel is . . . one of the most original you are likely to read this year.'

'It is immensely cheering to read a book that celebrates life and, as something inseparable from it, literature.'

'There are moments of great beauty and strangeness.' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

`An extremely important book in the Latin American canon, but
there is nothing difficult or high-minded about it. The Savage
Detectives is a grubby epic, part road movie, part joyful, nostalgic
confession... the book reveals itself as a masterpiece. In making himself
the heart of the novel, Bolaño has reinvented Kerouac, but without the
ego... The novel doesn't end well for either of its heroes, but it ends
magnificently for the reader.' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'A vast, sprawling road movie of a novel...it sparkles.'
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

An exhilarating, must-read novel from one of Latin America’s pre-eminent writers, and author of the acclaimed masterpiece 2666.

With a new afterword by Natasha Wimmer ‘Savagely comic yet equally tender . . . This novel is an elegy for a generation’ Independent New Year’s Eve 1975, Mexico City. Two hunted men leave town in a hurry, on the desert-bound trail of a vanished poet. Spanning two decades and crossing continents, theirs is a remarkable quest through a darkening universe – our own. It is a journey told and shared by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, whose testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of the twentieth century. ‘The comic frenzy, the inventiveness of character and situation, and the mood-soaked depiction of 1970s Mexico is delightful’ Times Literary Supplement ‘A portrait of people for whom literature is bread and water, sex and death. The abiding message to be taken from Bolaño’s novel, and maybe from his fraught life, too: books matter’ GQ ‘It’s no exaggeration to call Bolaño a genius. The Savage Detectives alone should grant him immortality’ Washington Post ‘Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world’ Guardian

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. Arrested and briefly jailed by the Pinochet regime in 1973, he spent nomadic years in El Salvador, Mexico, France, and finally Spain. The Savage Detectives received the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize and won Bolaño international fame.