Distant Star (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Bolaño, Roberto; Andrews, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811215865 ISBN 13: 9780811215862

Publisher: New Directions, 2004

Synopsis

For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime. The narrator, unable to stop himself, tries to track Ruiz-Tagle down, and sees signs of his activity over and over again. A corrosive, mocking humor sparkles within Bolano's darkest visions of Chile under Pinochet. In Bolano's world there's a big graveyard and there's a big graveyard laugh. (He once described his novel By Night in Chile as "a tale of terror, a situation comedy, and a combination pastoral-gothic novel.")

Many Chilean authors have written about the "bloody events of the early Pinochet years, the abductions and murders," Richard Eder commented in the The New York Times: "None has done it in so dark and glittering a fashion as Roberto Bolano."

About this title

Review:

The most influential and admired novelist of his generation in the Spanish-speaking world.--Susan Sontag

Bolaño's spare prose lends his narrator's account a chilly precision.

From the Publisher:

One of the key novels by the outstandingly talented Chilean author of By Night in Chile, who died tragically young earlier this year.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0811215865
• ISBN 13: 9780811215862
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 150