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Loading... By Night in Chileby Roberto Bolaño
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Confession  books4micks | Oct 16, 2009 |  living2read | Oct 16, 2009 | tiene secciones muy buenas, de mucha resonancia pero la novela no termina de cuajar. el cuento de los heroes y el tour de iglesias que usaban halcones son excepcionales. lo demas, meh. (  )1  mejix | Jun 23, 2009 | A beautifully written short novel about the often uncomfortable relationship between artists and rulers. (  ) jorgearanda | Jun 22, 2009 | Some sections of this novel really grabbed me, while others left me too easily distracted. Part of this I chalk up to my own indiscipline, part to the demands of the book: the whole thing is a single paragraph, and many sentences are several pages long. But the writing is elegant and the conceit--the monologue of a dying Chilean priest/literary critic lamenting his quiet complicity with the Pinochet government--is arresting. To better appreciate the narrative's temporal unity, I'd read the whole book in one sitting if I had it to do over again--it's slim at 130 pages, and reads fairly quickly once one finds its rhythm. Strong final sentence: "And then the storm of shit begins." (  ) joshberg | Mar 15, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0811215474, Paperback)A deathbed confession revolving around Opus Dei and Pinochet, By Night in Chile pours out the self-justifying dark memories of the Jesuit priest Father Urrutia.As through a crack in the wall, By Night in Chile's single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of Church and State in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel—Roberto Bolaño's first work available in English—recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet, but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and a conservative literary critic, a sort of lap dog to the rich and powerful cultural elite, in whose villas he encounters Pablo Neruda and Ernst Jünger. Father Urrutia is offered a tour of Europe by agents of Opus Dei (to study "the disintegration of the churches," a journey into realms of the surreal); and ensnared by this plum, he is next assigned—after the destruction of Allende—the secret, never-to-be-disclosed job of teaching Pinochet, at night, all about Marxism, so the junta generals can know their enemy. Soon, searingly, his memories go from bad to worse. Heart-stopping and hypnotic, By Night in Chile marks the American debut of an astonishing writer. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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