Bolaño always wished that if he weren't a writer, he would be a 'homicide detective, to be the one who goes back alone to the crime scene at night, unafraid of ghosts.' In this novel, he returns to his childhood haunts, risking awakening all the ghosts, to narrate with ease and kindness a tale of crime and horror, reflecting on the fates of the Latin American generations. He returns not with false nostalgia, but to craft a hymn for the places, people, readings, and atmospheres that shaped his maturity and consciousness. This hymn becomes a form of a homeland; for this world wanderer, after his immediate family, home is found in some books, characters, and locations. Astonishingly, this hymn of home transforms into a lament for exile and alienation, uprooting the literary and physical roots of an entire generation. In a beautiful and moving work, we discern the weight of reality through a female narrator on the edge of madness—yet humane and entertaining—prompting us to conspire and reflect, while she settles in our minds to breathe again, live, and grow. His method in constructing texts of deceptive simplicity, perplexing, radiant, and intimately close at once, is his way to resist evil and banality.

Publishing house: Dar Al Tanweer for Printing, Publishing, and Distribution

Number of Pages: 165

Year of publication: 2012