Last Evenings on Earth
Roberto Bolaño, translated by Chris Andrews
2008, Vintage
277 pages
THIS IS the first collection of short stories by the universally acclaimed Chilean author to be published in English, and they are imbued with the private melancholy of the marginalised on a quest for something beyond their reach. Bolaño was a poet who wrote prose to support his family, but his precise and distinctive style, undoubtedly influenced by Borges, is hypnotic. Last Evenings on Earth provides a great introduction to the work of this writer, who died in 2003 aged just 50 and was described by Susan Sontag as the most admired novelist of his generation in the Spanish-speaking world. – EC
