Last Evenings On Earth - Hardcover

Bolano, Roberto

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1843431815 ISBN 13: 9781843431817

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 2007

Synopsis

A collection of fourteen stories by the acclaimed Chilean author. Set largely in the world of the Chilean diaspora in Central America and Europe, the narrators of these stories are usually writers grappling with private quests who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witness to a crime.

About this title

Review:

Haunting, unsettling, evocative, Roberto Bolană's Last Evenings on Earth is a remarkable book, and as the first of celebrated Chilean author's work to be translated into English (by Chris Andrews), it's the perfect introduction to the man who Susan Sontag called 'the most influential and admired novelist of his generation in the Spanish-speaking world'.

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 Bolană'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 Bolană has a curious side-effect: you will find yourself proselytising on his behalf to anyone who will listen (and to some who won't). Bolană's writing is addictive – and it has that effect on the reader. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

'It's a book full of insight for writers and aficionados of South
American literature and culture' -- Scotland on Sunday

`Bolano can be savagely comic as he mocks his generation, yet equally tender in his piecing together of broken lives.'
-- Independent

`this may be the most haunting and mesmerising collection I have
ever read'
-- Daily Telegraph - Rev'd Miranda France

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvill Secker
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1843431815
• ISBN 13: 9781843431817
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288