University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

Chilean author Roberto Bolaño's stories are wonderful, unconventional works that blur the bounds between fiction and nonfiction. His ethereal voice and often edgy subject matter remind the American reader of the importance of following writers from abroad, in this case a witness to both the violence and intellectual vibrancy that enlivened and gave urgency to literary culture in Mexico and Chile in the the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. This author's early death at age 50 deprived the world of his future literary masterpieces, but the appearance of several excellent translations in the 2000s has made his uniquely structured and strangely affecting stories available to readers and students and practitioners of creative writing in the US, to all of our benefit.