Amulet

(Paperback)

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Description

A major, retrospective launch of Roberto Bolano's work - now published as a Vintage Classics author for the first time. Auxilio Lacouture is trapped. For twelve days she hides alone in a lavatory on the fourth floor of her university. Staring at the floor, she begins a heartfelt and feverish tale- she is the Mother of Mexican poetry. A highly charged first-person semi-hallucinatory novella, Amulet is a potent stream of consciousness through which the poets of Mexico rage and swirl. Filled with wild, dark literary prophecies, heroic poets, mad poets, artists 'choked by the brilliance of youth', Auxilio's passionate narration - both heartbreaking and lyrical - is suffused with the essence of Roberto Bolano's art. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS 'Encapsulates the violence and tragedy of recent Latin American history' The Times 'Roberto Bolano redefined the form of the novel in his masterpiece 2666; with the hallucinatory narrative of Amulet, he reimagines what literature can become' New Statesman

Reviews

Roberto Bolao redefined the form of the novel in his masterpiece 2666; with the hallucinatory narrative of Amulet, he reimagines what literature can become. * New Statesman *
A curtain-raising taster to the epic of his landmark works. * Independent *
His work is the crossroads where Mrquez meets Burroughs and Borges meets Mailer, resulting in a riotous dust-up. * Guardian *
Encapsulates the violence and tragedy of recent Latin American history . . . spare but beautifully compacted. * The Times *
A short, original, engaged and engaging novel; a good introduction to the longer works of this writer. * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Bio

Roberto Bolano was born in Santiago, Chile in 1953 and died in Catalonia in 2003. He was widely regarded as the essential Latin American writer of our age. He was best known for his novels (including The Savage Detectives, which won a number of prestigious literary awards, Nocturno de Chile, translated as By Night in Chile, and 2666, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award) and his short stories, first published in English in Last Evenings on Earth.