Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas

(Paperback)

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One more journey to the literary universe of Roberto Bolao, an essential voice of contemporary Latin American literature Roberto Bolao's boundless imagination and seemingly inexhaustible gift for shaping the chaos of his reality into enduring fiction is unmistakable in these three exhilarating novellas. In 'Cowboy Graves', Arturo Belano - Bolao's alter ego - returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism. 'French Comedy of Horrors' takes the reader to French Guiana on the night after an eclipse where a seventeen-year-old answers a pay phone and finds himself recruited into the Clandestine Surrealist Group, a secret society of artists based in the sewers of Paris. And in 'Fatherland', a young poet reckons with the fascist overthrow of his country, as the woman he is obsessed with disappears in the ensuing violence and a Third Reich fighter plane mysteriously writes her poetry in the sky overhead. Cowboy Graves is an unexpected treasure from the vault of a master of contemporary fiction. These three fiercely original tales bear the signatures of Bolao's extraordinary body of work, echoing the strange characters and uncanny scenes of his great triumphs, while deepening our understanding of his profound gifts.

Reviews

Companionable, exotic, witty and glamorously suggestive . . . A primary element in the compound that keeps Bolaoites hooked is the voice: it hardly matters what its saying, or what the torrent of words ultimately amounts to, when it speaks so seductively. * Observer *
Bolao's brilliant oeuvre expands with another bright starburst, this one comprising three separate yet thematically connected novellas . . . Bolao's inimitable style and searing vision will appeal to fans and new readers alike. * Booklist *
All three texts offer something unique and at times fascinating . . . a rare opportunity for the reader to witness the creation of a seemingly inexhaustible body of work. * El Pas *

Author Bio

Roberto Bolao was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City. His first full-length novel, The Savage Detectives, won the Herralde Prize and the Rmulo Gallegos Prize, and Natasha Wimmer's translation of The Savage Detectives was chosen as one of the ten best books of 2007 by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Bolao died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty. Described by the New York Times as "the most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation", in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666.