The Savage Detectives - Hardcover

Roberto Bolano

4.17

44,278 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330445146 ISBN 13: 9780330445146

Publisher: Picador, 2007

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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 Bola�o’s novel, and maybe from his fraught life, too: books matter’ GQ

‘It’s no exaggeration to call Bola�o a genius. The Savage Detectives alone should grant him immortality’ Washington Post

‘Bola�o makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world’ Guardian

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Review:

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, Bola�o 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. --.

James Wood, John Banville and Susan Sontag have all called [Bola�o] the most influential writer of his generation... Bola�o s penchant for wisecracking motormouths means that his fiction has instant impact, but only at length does it reveal the brilliance to justify the adulation... Exhilarating... The Savage Detectives shows us a writer who has found his ideal medium. --Prospect magazine

[an] effortless blend of irreverent humour with a muted sense of tragedy. --Sunday Telegraph

Book Description:

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

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