I would say time is divided into many rivers, but that’s probably from reading too much science fiction. Listen and learn. Time is divided into two rivers: one flows backward, devouring life already lived; the other moves forward with you exposing your life. For a single second they may be joined. Now. This is that moment, the drop of an instant that washes away the past. It is the present. It is in your hands. Racing, slipping, tumbling like a...
Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas is a collection of three short works by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. It was posthumously published by Alfaguara in September 2017. An English translation by Natasha Wimmer was published by Penguin Press on 16 February 2021. The book collects three short pieces, Cowboy Graves , French Comedy of Horrors , and Fatherland . It is accompanied by an afterword by Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas as well as a note on the text by Bolaño’s widow,...
With a murder at its heart, Roberto Bolano’s The Skating Rink is, among other things, a crime novel. Murder seems to have exerted a fascination for the endlessly talented Bolano, who in his last interview, according to The Observer, “declared, in all apparent seriousness, that what he would most like to have been was a homicide detective.” Set in the seaside town of Z, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink is told in short, suspenseful chapters by three male narrators,...
Chilean author Roberto Bolaño wrote and published 2666 posthumously in 2004. It is a sprawling and complex work that weaves together multiple storylines and characters. It explores themes of violence, the search for meaning, and the human condition. The novel is divided into five parts, each with its own distinct narrative focus. I. The part about the critics The first part introduces four European literary critics obsessed with the elusive and reclusive German author Benno von Archimboldi. II. The part...