I have read plenty of books by Roberto Bolaño before, and most of them I enjoy massively. So I had high expectations for this one, and fortunately, this one delivered. This book is a haunting collection of thirteen short stories, published in English in 2010. I think that this book is classic Bolaño: a mix of the gritty, the surreal, and the meta-literary. I have read The Savage Detectives and 2666 before, and I find many of the same "ghosts"—lost poets, exiled revolutionaries, and detectives—haunting these pages. This book is literature that feels like a fever dream, where the mundane suddenly shifts into the macabre. It captures the "nightmare logic" of the 20th century while remaining deeply human and, at times, unexpectedly tender.
It features stories that are dark and varied. It tackles various themes such as the afterlife of failure, as many characters are failed poets or revolutionaries who are "haunted" by their pasts or by the literal ghosts of their peers. Another theme is violence and fascism: Bolaño often explores how violence is not just a political act but a "normal" part of the landscape in Latin America and Europe. And there is also this "nesting" narrative: He frequently uses a "box-within-a-box" structure, where one character tells a story about someone else telling a story, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. It definitely is a book that makes one think, even though it is rather a thin tome, clocking in only within 200 pages.
Overall, I had fun reading this. I enjoyed every single short story, and absolutely recommend it to others. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.
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