Roberto Bolaño facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Roberto Bolaño
Stencil graffiti in Barcelona featuring Bolaño (2012)
Born	Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (1953-04-28)28 April 1953 Santiago, Chile
Died	15 July 2003(2003-07-15) (aged 50) Barcelona, Spain
Occupation	Writer, poet
Language	Spanish
Signature

Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (Spanish: [roˈβeɾto βoˈlaɲo ˈaβalos]; 28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003) was a famous writer from Chile. He wrote novels, short stories, and poems. Many people consider him one of the most important Latin American writers of the 20th century.

In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives). After he passed away, his novel 2666 won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2008. The New York Times newspaper called him "the most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation."

Roberto Bolaño's Life Story

Growing Up in Chile

Roberto Bolaño was born in 1953 in Santiago. His father was a truck driver and a boxer, and his mother was a teacher. Roberto and his younger sister spent their early years in southern Chile.

He described himself as thin, nearsighted, and someone who loved to read. He had dyslexia, which made reading and writing a bit harder for him. He often felt like an outsider at school and was sometimes picked on. When he was ten, he started his first job selling bus tickets.

Teen Years in Mexico

In 1968, Roberto moved with his family to Mexico City. He left school and started working as a journalist. He also became involved in political groups that wanted to make society fairer.

Short Visit to Chile

In 1973, Bolaño went back to Chile from Mexico. He wanted to support the government of Salvador Allende, which was trying to create a more equal society.

However, there was a military takeover led by Augusto Pinochet. Bolaño was arrested because people thought he might be a "terrorist." He was held for eight days. Two old classmates who had become prison guards helped him get out. He wrote about this experience in his story "Dance Card."

Bolaño had mixed feelings about his home country. He was known for criticizing some Chilean writers. One writer, Ariel Dorfman, said that because Bolaño didn't quite fit in Chile, he felt free to write whatever he wanted.

Back to Mexico

After leaving Chile in 1974, Bolaño returned to Mexico. He became a founding member of a poetry group called Infrarrealismo (Infrarealism) in 1975. He later made fun of parts of this group in his novel The Savage Detectives.

In Mexico, he was known as a bold and rebellious poet. His editor, Jorge Herralde, remembered him as someone who would "burst into literary presentations and readings."

Moving to Spain

In 1977, Bolaño moved to Europe and eventually settled in Spain. He lived near Barcelona on the Costa Brava. To support himself, he worked many different jobs, like washing dishes, cleaning campgrounds, and collecting garbage. He used his free time to write. From the 1980s until he died, he lived in the small beach town of Blanes.

He mostly wrote poetry at first. But in his early forties, he started writing fiction. He said he began writing novels to help support his family, especially after his son was born in 1990. He knew he couldn't earn enough money as a poet. Even so, he always thought of himself as a poet first. A collection of his poems, Los perros románticos (The Romantic Dogs), was published in 2000.

His Health and Passing Away

Roberto Bolaño's health got worse over time. He had liver problems and was waiting for a liver transplant while writing his last big novel, 2666. He passed away in 2003.

Six weeks before he died, other Latin American writers praised him at a conference. His friend, Rodrigo Fresán, said that Bolaño "created a new way to be a great Latin American writer." Bolaño often joked about the word "posthumous," which means after death. He would probably be amused to see how popular his books became after he was gone. He died in a hospital in Barcelona on July 15, 2003.

Bolaño was survived by his wife and their two children. He once called them "my only motherland."

Roberto Bolaño's Books

Even though he is famous for his novels and short stories, Bolaño wrote a lot of poetry. He once said, "Poetry is more than enough for me."

He quickly published many popular books. The most important ones are the novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), the short novel Nocturno de Chile (By Night in Chile), and, after he died, the novel 2666. His short story collections Llamadas telefónicas and Putas asesinas also won awards.

Novels and Novellas

The Skating Rink

The Skating Rink (La pista de hielo) is set in a town by the sea in Spain. The story is told by three men and is about a talented ice skater named Nuria Martí. When she is removed from the Olympic team, a government worker secretly builds her an ice rink using public money. But Nuria causes jealousy, and the rink becomes a place where a crime happens.

Nazi Literature in the Americas

Nazi Literature in the Americas (La literatura Nazi en América) is a made-up, funny encyclopedia. It describes fictional writers and critics from Latin America and America who support fascism. These characters are so focused on themselves that they don't see how ordinary their writing is. This book was published in 1996.

Distant Star

Distant Star (Estrella distante) is a short novel about the politics of the Pinochet government in Chile. It deals with murder, photography, and even poetry written in the sky by airplane smoke. This dark and sometimes funny book looks at Chilean political history.

The Savage Detectives

The Savage Detectives (Los detectives salvajes) is one of Bolaño's most famous novels. It has been compared to works by other great Latin American writers like Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges.

The middle part of The Savage Detectives tells many short stories about the travels of Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima. These two characters travel from Mexico City to places like Israel, Paris, Barcelona, and even Liberia during its civil war. Fifty-two different characters tell these stories. The book begins and ends with the story of their search for Cesárea Tinajero, who started a Mexican poetry movement in the 1920s. Bolaño called The Savage Detectives "a love letter to my generation."

Amulet

Amulet (Amuleto) focuses on a poet named Auxilio Lacouture. She also appears briefly in The Savage Detectives. In Amulet, she is stuck in a bathroom at a university in Mexico City for two weeks while the army attacks the school. In this short novel, she meets many Latin American artists and writers, including Arturo Belano.

By Night in Chile

By Night in Chile (Nocturno de Chile) is told by a Chilean priest and poet named Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, who is dying. At one point, two agents ask him to study how to protect old churches in Europe. He learns that pigeons are a big problem. The priests in Europe use hawks to get rid of the pigeons. The priest's quiet acceptance of this violent method shows how some intellectuals might have quietly supported the harsh methods of the Pinochet government. This book shows Bolaño's thoughts about Chile and how power can be used unfairly.

Antwerp

Antwerp was written in 1980 but wasn't published until 2002, a year before Bolaño died. It's a mix of prose and poetry, with a loose story. It features themes and characters that Bolaño often used in his later works, such as crimes, campgrounds, wanderers, poetry, love, and unusual people. Bolaño once said, "The only novel that doesn't embarrass me is Antwerp."

2666

2666 was published in 2004, after Bolaño's death. He spent the last five years of his life working on this book while dealing with liver problems. It is a very long novel, over 1,100 pages in Spanish. It is divided into five parts. 2666 shows the horrors of the 20th century through many characters, including police officers, journalists, and four professors looking for a mysterious German writer named Benno von Archimboldi. In 2008, the book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

The Third Reich

The Third Reich (El Tercer Reich) was written in 1989 but found among Bolaño's papers after he died. It was published in Spanish in 2010 and in English in 2011. The main character is Udo Berger, a German champion of war games. He goes back to the Spanish town where he spent his childhood summers and plays a war game with a stranger.

Woes of the True Policeman

Woes of the True Policeman (Los sinsabores del verdadero policía) was first published in Spanish in 2011 and in English in 2012. This novel has characters and storylines that add to or change parts of Bolaño's novel 2666. He started writing it in the 1980s but never finished it before he died.

The Spirit of Science Fiction

The Spirit of Science Fiction (El espíritu de la ciencia-ficción) was finished by Bolaño around 1984. It was published after his death in 2016 (Spanish) and 2019 (English). Many people see it as an early version of The Savage Detectives, with similar characters and situations about young poets and writers in Mexico City.

Short Story Collections

Last Evenings on Earth

Last Evenings on Earth (Llamadas Telefónicas) is a collection of fourteen short stories. Many of them are told by a character named "B.", who is a lot like Bolaño himself.

The Return

The Return is a collection of twelve short stories. It was first published in English in 2010.

The Insufferable Gaucho

The Insufferable Gaucho (El Gaucho Insufrible) includes five short stories and two essays. The main story was inspired by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges's short story The South.

The Secret of Evil

The Secret of Evil (El Secreto del Mal) is a collection of short stories and memories or essays. The Spanish version came out in 2007. Some stories in this collection feature characters from Bolaño's earlier works, like Arturo Belano.

Poems

The Romantic Dogs

The Romantic Dogs (Los perros románticos), published in 2006, was the first collection of his poetry translated into English. Bolaño said he considered himself a poet first and only started writing fiction later in life to support his children.

The Unknown University

The Unknown University is a special edition of all of Bolaño's poetry. It was translated from Spanish in 2013 and was nominated for an award in 2014.

Main Ideas in Bolaño's Work

In the last ten years of his life, Bolaño wrote many short stories and novels. In his fiction, the characters are often writers or poets. These writers appear everywhere in Bolaño's stories, sometimes as heroes, sometimes as villains, detectives, or rebels.

Other important ideas in his books include:

• Searching for something important.
• The special power of poetry.
• How poetry and crime can be connected.
• The unavoidable violence in modern life in Latin America.
• The important human experiences of youth, love, and death.

Bolaño believed that all literature has political meaning. He wrote, "All literature, in a certain sense, is political." He meant that literature thinks about politics and can also be a plan for how society should be.

Bolaño's writings often explore what literature is for and how it connects to life. Reading his books can make you look at the world more closely.

English Translations

Roberto Bolaño's books started to become very popular with English readers in the early 2000s. His first American publisher, New Directions, decided to publish By Night in Chile, Distant Star, and Last Evenings on Earth. By Night in Chile came out in 2003 and was praised by famous writer Susan Sontag.

Later, his two biggest books, The Savage Detectives and 2666, were published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Many of his other works have also been translated into English, allowing more people around the world to read his stories and poems.

Images for kids

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  Stencil graffiti in Barcelona featuring Bolaño (2012)

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  Roberto Bolaño's signature

See also

In Spanish: Roberto Bolaño para niños