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Roberto Bolaño

    28. apríl 1953 – 15. júl 2003

    Roberto Bolaño bol zapáleným básnikom, ktorého literárna povesť však napokon spočívala v jeho románoch, novelách a poviedkach. Po búrlivom mladí, ktoré strávil ako tulák po Južnej Amerike a Európe, sa usadil v Španielsku, kde najprv pracoval na rôznych podradných povolaniach a písal vo voľnom čase. V neskoršom veku sa rozhodol venovať próze, pretože cítil zodpovednosť za finančné zabezpečenie svojej rodiny. Jeho diela sa vyznačujú surovou úprimnosťou a často skúmajú temnejšie stránky ľudskej existencie, pričom si zachovávajú silný lyrický podtón.

    By Night In Chile
    Amulet
    2666
    The Savage Detectives
    Lumpen románik
    Vzdialená hviezda
    • Vzdialená hviezda

      • 150 stránok
      • 6 hodin čítania

      Roberto Bolano napísal zvláštny román noir, v ktorom sa miešajú umenie, dejiny a teror. V ateliéri poézie, ktorý navštevuje rozprávač románu v provinčnom meste v Čile, sa objaví zvodný a záhadne odťažitý mladý muž. Pinochetov puč poskytne tomuto čudnému umelcovi príležitosť predviesť svoju radikálnu umeleckú koncepciu krutosti, keď zavraždí niekoľko žien za okolností, ktoré si ani čitateľ, ani rozprávač nedokážu predstaviť. Vzdialená hviezda je mrazivým skúmaním fašistickej mentality a hraníc zla podaným vo forme strhujúceho literárneho trileru.

      Vzdialená hviezda
      4,0
    • Lumpen románik

      • 88 stránok
      • 4 hodiny čítania

      „Teraz som matka a zároveň vydatá žena, no nie tak dávno som žila mimo zákon.“ Týmito slovami začína Bianca svoj príbeh o neľahkom – zločineckom – dospievaní v Ríme. Keď príde o rodičov, nechá školu, nájde si slabo platenú prácu a obklopí sa nesprávnou spoločnosťou. Keď jej mladší brat domov privedie dvoch zlodejíčkov, Bianca zistí, ako hlboko dokáže klesnúť. Lumpen románik je prekvapivým podobenstvom o tom, ako znovu získať moc nad vlastným životom.

      Lumpen románik
      3,6
    • The Savage Detectives

      • 592 stránok
      • 21 hodin čítania

      Set against the backdrop of New Year's Eve 1975, two poets, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, embark on a quest from Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala to find the elusive Cesárea Tinajero, a vanished poet. Their journey takes a violent turn in the Sonora desert, forcing them into a life on the run for twenty years. This ambitious novel captures their experiences through the perspectives of various characters they encounter across Central America, Europe, Israel, and West Africa. Among them are the enchanting Font sisters, their father in a Mexico City asylum, a devoted follower of Octavio Paz, a brash American grad student, a French girl with a penchant for the Marquis de Sade, the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky, a Chilean stowaway gifted with numbers, an anorexic heiress to a Mexican underwear empire, and an Argentinian photojournalist in Angola, alongside a host of critics, lovers, and vagabonds. Roberto Bolaño, a literary descendant of Borges and Pynchon, explores the intricate relationship between literature and violence, revealing a world where national boundaries blur and death is ever-present in the avant-garde. This work stands as a remarkable testament to the vitality of contemporary Latin American literature.

      The Savage Detectives
      4,4
    • An American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student interact in an urban community on the U.S.-Mexico border where hundreds of young factory workers have disappeared.

      2666
      4,3
    • Amulet

      • 192 stránok
      • 7 hodin čítania

      It is September 1968 and the Mexican student movement is about to run head-on into the repressive right-wing government of Mexico: hundreds of young people will soon die. When the army invades the university, one woman hides in a fourth-floor ladies' room and for twelve days she is the only person left on campus. Staring at the floor, she recounts her bohemian life among the young poets of Mexico City—inventing and reinventing freely—and along the way she creates a cosmology of literature. As they grow ever more hallucinatory, her "memories" become mythologies before completely transforming into riveting dark prophecies. Hair-raising and enthralling, Amulet is a heart-breaking novel and another brilliant example of the art of Roberto Bolaño, 'the most admired novelist,' as Susan Sontag noted, 'in the Spanish-speaking world.'

      Amulet
      3,9
    • By Night In Chile

      • 144 stránok
      • 6 hodin čítania

      During the course of a single night, Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a Chilean priest, who is a member of Opus Dei, a literary critic and a mediocre poet, relives some of the crucial events of his life.

      By Night In Chile
      3,8
    • Nazi Literature in the Americas

      • 260 stránok
      • 10 hodin čítania

      Featuring several mass-murdering authors, two fraternal writers at the head of a football-hooligan ring and a poet who crafts his lines in the air with sky writing, Nazi Literature in the Americas details the lives of a rich cast of characters from one of the most extraordinarily fecund imaginations in world literature. Written with acerbic wit and virtuosic flair, this encyclopaedic cavalcade of fictional pan-American authors is the terrifyingly humourous and remarkably inventive masterpiece which made Bolaño famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

      Nazi Literature in the Americas
      3,8
    • The Third Reich

      • 288 stránok
      • 11 hodin čítania

      Shortly after becoming the German war-games champion, Udo Berger and his girlfriend, Ingeborg, holiday on the Costa Brava. There they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, and a band of shady locals who introduce them to the darker side of life in the town. Then, late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udoâe(tm)s well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval . . . Frightened, Udo refuses to leave, even after Ingeborg returns home, and his increasingly feverish dreams push him into delirium. As everything slips beyond his grasp, he attempts to re-assert himself by engaging the enigmatic and severely disfigured El Quemado âe" a foreigner who lives in a Spartan burrow on the beach âe" in a days-long match of his favourite war game, Third Reich. But, too late to stop the madness, he realizes that the consequences of this game are much more serious than he ever imagined. Combining the exhilaration of The Savage Detectives with the darkness of his later work, The Third Reich âe" Bolañoâe(tm)s first new novel since the epic 2666 âe" is a visceral book exploring memory, madness and violence. It is both the perfect way to discover the dazzling genius of Roberto Bolaño and an unmissable addition to the oeuvre for those who already have.

      The Third Reich
      3,5
    • The Return

      • 208 stránok
      • 8 hodin čítania

      Pankaj Mishra remarked in The Nation , "one of the remarkable qualities of Bolaño's short stories is that they can do the work of a novel". The Return contains thirteen unforgettable stories bent on returning to haunt you. Wide-ranging, suggestive, and daring, a Bolaño story might concern the unexpected fate of a beautiful ex-girlfriend or a dream of meeting Enrique Lihn; his plots go anywhere and everywhere and they always surprise. Consider the title piece: a young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor; just as his soul is departing his body, it realizes strange doings are afoot--and what follows next defies the imagination (except Bolaño's own). Although a few have been serialized in The New Yorker and Playboy , most of the stories of The Return have never before appeared in English, and to Bolaño's many readers will be like catnip to the cats.

      The Return
      3,9
    • The acclaimed Chilean author's first collection of stories to be published in English. Here are fourteen stories set largely among those living in the margins, on the edge. "The most haunting and mesmerizing collection I have ever read."--"Daily Telegraph"

      Last Evenings on Earth
      3,9