By Night in Chile (Paperback)

By Night in Chile By Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews (Translated by) Cover Image

By Night in Chile (Paperback)

By Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews (Translated by)

$13.95


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A deathbed confession revolving around Opus Dei and Pinochet, By Night in Chile pours out the self-justifying dark memories of the Jesuit priest Father Urrutia.


As through a crack in the wall, By Night in Chile's single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of Church and State in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel—Roberto Bolano's first work available in English—recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet, but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and a conservative literary critic, a sort of lap dog to the rich and powerful cultural elite, in whose villas he encounters Pablo Neruda and Ernst Junger. Father Urrutia is offered a tour of Europe by agents of Opus Dei (to study "the disintegration of the churches," a journey into realms of the surreal); and ensnared by this plum, he is next assigned—after the destruction of Allende—the secret, never-to-be-disclosed job of teaching Pinochet, at night, all about Marxism, so the junta generals can know their enemy. Soon, searingly, his memories go from bad to worse. Heart-stopping and hypnotic, By Night in Chile marks the American debut of an astonishing writer.
Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolano (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.

The poet and translator Chris Andrews has won the Valle Inclan Prize and the French-American Translation Prize for his work.
Product Details ISBN: 9780811215473
ISBN-10: 0811215474
Publisher: New Directions
Publication Date: December 17th, 2003
Pages: 118
Language: English
Still his greatest work.
— James Wood

A wonderful torrent of emotion, a brilliant historical meditation, a captivating fantasy…Destined to occupy forever a place in universal literature.
— Susan Sontag

In Chris Andrews's lucid translation, Bolaño's febrile narrative tack and occasional surreal touches bring to mind the classics of Latin American magic realism; his cerebral protagonist and nonfiction borrowings are reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard and W. G. Sebald. The novel, Bolaño's first to be translated into English, is at once occasion for celebration and for mourning.
— New York Times