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The protagonists have one thing in common in these stories: often on the fringes of society, they are engaged in difficult, challenging quests, their lives frequently on the line. And when they find what they are seeking, those lives are often changed irrevocably – and forever. The bleak undercurrent of life in Pinochet's regime is the background here, but the narratives of the stories contain a whole universe. In the title tale, the central character pursues – rather desperately – a hedonistic, erotically-charged lifestyle on a holiday in Acapulco. The pleasures of the flesh do not offer the relief he seeks, and he finds consolation in the work of a surrealist poet who died during the Nazi regime, possibly at his own hand. Many of the Bolanã's favourite themes are brilliantly worked out here, in prose that leaps off the page. The other stories glitter with same coruscating brilliance – and despite the recurrence of such dark themes as suicide – this is not at all depressing fare: in fact, reading Last Evenings on Earth is a positively life-enhancing experience.
There should be a warning on the jacket of the book, however, reading Roberto Bolanã has a curious side-effect: you will find yourself proselytising on his behalf to anyone who will listen (and to some who won't). Bolanã's writing is addictive – and it has that effect on the reader. --Barry Forshaw
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Book Description Condition: New. Brand New! Not Overstocks or Low Quality Book Club Editions! Direct From the Publisher! We're not a giant, faceless warehouse organization! We're a small town bookstore that loves books and loves it's customers! Buy from Lakeside Books!. Seller Inventory # OTF-S-9780811216883
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. "The melancholy folklore of exile," as Roberto Bolano once put it, pervades these fourteen haunting stories. Bolano's narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and generally unlucky) quests, who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and to narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living in the margins, often coming to pieces, and sometimes, as in a nightmare, in constant flight from something horrid. In the short story "Silva the Eye," Bolano writes in the opening sentence: "It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as The Eye, always tried to escape violence, even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around 20 years old when Salvador Allende died." Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolano's beloved "failed generation," the stories of Last Evenings on Earth have appeared in The New Yorker and Grand Street. The first short-story collection in English by the acclaimed Chilean author Roberto Bolano. Winner of a 2005 PEN Translation Fund Award. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780811216883
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. reprint edition. 224 pages. 8.00x5.25x0.75 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0811216888