Synopses & Reviews
The Return contains thirteen unforgettable stories that seem to tell what Bolaño called "the secret story," "the one we'll never know." Bent on returning to haunt you, Bolaño's tales might concern the unexpected fate of a beautiful ex-girlfriend, or soccer, witchcraft, or a dream of meeting the poet Enrique Lihn:they always surprise. Consider the title story: a young party-goer collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor. Just as his soul is departing his body,it realizes strange happenings are afoot around his now dead body — and what follows next defies the imagination (except Bolaño's own).
Review
"The sense of embattlement that animates the writing, and the scab-picking intensity that he brings to his obsessions, makes The Return a compelling encapsulation of Bolaño's work." The Los Angeles Times
Review
"Dark, intimate and sneakily touching: there is gold to be found in this collection." The New York Review of Books
Review
"Each tale turns the reader into a voyeur, grasping at snapshots of troubled lives and ghosts." The Guardian
Synopsis
A stunning collection of short stories — mostly dealing with the sex trade — by the late Chilean master and author of The Savage Detectives.
About the Author
Author of
2666 and many other acclaimed works,
Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed “by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time” (Ilan Stavans,
The Los Angeles Times),” and as “the real thing and the rarest” (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
Chris Andrews has won the TLS Valle Inclán Prize and the PEN Translation Prize for his New Directions translations of Roberto Bolaño. A poet who lives and teaches in Australia, he has translated eight Bolaño books and three novels by César Aira for New Directions.