Deux romans de jeunesse de l'auteur chilien inédits en poche : dans L'Esprit de la science-fiction, deux jeunes apprentis écrivains paressent, font des rencontres amoureuses ou les rêvent à Mexico dans les années 1970. Les Déboires du vrai policier, que Bolaño a continué à écrire jusqu'à sa mort, cultive l'art du fragmentaire, déploie une constellation de personnages et d'histoires, et contient toute la mythologie de son oeuvre.

L'esprit de la science fiction suivi de les déboires du vrai policier

A Rome, après la mort soudaine de ses parents dans un accident de voiture, Bianca commence une véritable descente aux enfers, côtoyant la délinquance et le mal. Elle se rappelle sa vie avec son frère, tous deux adolescents au moment du drame. Livrés à eux-mêmes, ils abandonnent leurs études pour essayer de survivre et rencontrent deux individus étranges, le Bolognais et le Libyen. Dans ce dernier roman publié de son vivant, Roberto Bolaño abandonne les territoires qui ont marqué son parcours et son imaginaire personnels pour se déplacer vers la ville de Rome.

Un petit roman Lumpen

En septembre 1968, pour échapper à la police qui envahit l'Université de Mexico, Auxilio Lacouture se cache au quatrième étage de la faculté de Lettres et de Philosophie. Cette Uruguayenne, amie des poètes et de la poésie, passe treize jours et treize nuits ainsi enfermée dans les toilettes des femmes. "J'étais à la faculté ce fameux 18 septembre quand l'armée viola l'autonomie de l'université et entra sur le campus pour arrêter ou tuer tout le monde. "Ainsi recluse, elle raconte son histoire au fil d'un vaste récit qui mêle passé et futur, évoquant les jeunes gens qu'elle a connus à l'université - génération bientôt sacrifiée par l'armée - et les événements de ces années troubles qu'elle a traversées comme une ombre. Par moments, cette réflexion prend également les allures d'un songe mystique au sein duquel surgissent certains personnages historiques tels Remedios Varo, peintre surréaliste épouse du poète Benjamin Péret, ou la poétesse salvadorienne Lilian Serpas. Dans cet ouvrage qui fut l'un des premiers de Roberto Bolano à paraitre en France, on retrouve la combinaison, propre à l'auteur, d'une atmosphère angoissante, proche des récits d'Edgar Allan Poe, et d'une terreur politique bien contemporaine. A cet égard, Amuleto annonce les œuvres futures de l'auteur, où les écrivains et les poètes jouent souvent un rôle essentiel : La littérature nazie en Amérique, Etoile distante, Nocturne du Chili...

Amuleto

'Companionable, exotic, witty and glamorously suggestive' ObserverOne more journey to the literary universe of Roberto Bolaño, an essential voice of contemporary Latin American literatureRoberto Bolaño's boundless imagination and seemingly inexhaustible gift for shaping the chaos of his reality into enduring fiction is unmistakable in these three exhilarating novellas. In 'Cowboy Graves', Arturo Belano - Bolaño's alter ego - returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism. 'French Comedy of Horrors' takes the reader to French Guiana on the night after an eclipse where a seventeen-year-old answers a pay phone and finds himself recruited into the Clandestine Surrealist Group, a secret society of artists based in the sewers of Paris. And in 'Fatherland', a young poet reckons with the fascist overthrow of his country, as the woman he is obsessed with disappears in the ensuing violence and a Third Reich fighter plane mysteriously writes her poetry in the sky overhead. Cowboy Graves is an unexpected treasure from the vault of a master of contemporary fiction. These three fiercely original tales bear the signatures of Bolaño's extraordinary body of work, echoing the strange characters and uncanny scenes of his great triumphs, while deepening our understanding of his profound gifts.

Cowboy Graves - Three Novellas

A tale of bohemian youth on the make in Mexico City from a master of contemporary fiction, and a sublime precursor to The Savage Detectives. Two young poets, Jan and Remo, find themselves adrift in Mexico City. Obsessed with poetry, and, above all, with science fiction, they are eager to forge a life in the literary world - or sacrifice themselves to it. Roberto Bolaño's The Spirit of Science Fiction is a story of youth hungry for revolution, notoriety, and sexual adventure, as they work to construct a reality out of the fragments of their dreams. But as close as these friends are, the city tugs them in opposite directions. Jan withdraws from the world, shutting himself in their shared rooftop apartment where he feverishly composes fan letters to the stars of science fiction, and dreams of cosmonauts and Nazis. Meanwhile, Remo runs head-first into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city's labyrinthine streets, rundown cafes, and murky bathhouses. The Spirit of Science Fiction is a kaleidoscopic work of strange and tender beauty, and a fitting introduction for readers uninitiated into the thrills of Roberto Bolaño's fiction. It is an indispensable addition to an ecstatic and transgressive body of work.

The Spirit of Science Fiction

Dans ce "roman" constitué d'une trentaine de biographies fictives d'écrivains et d'artistes américains, la plupart latino-américains, le lecteur est mené à travers le XXe siècle, de la Patagonie aux prisons du Sud des Etats-Unis, de la bourgeoise mexicaine conservatrice aux supporters de l'équipe de football d'Argentine. Loin d'être un simple exercice littéraire, cette parodie grinçante s'en prend à certaines réalités sud-américaines.

La Littérature nazie en Amérique

'If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear...'A rat policeman comes to the startling realisation that each rat is out for themselves. An elderly judge gives up his job in the city for an improbable return to the family farm in the Pampas. An elusive film-maker and the little-known Argentinian novelist whose work he's plagiarized for years, finally fall into confrontation. Unpredictable and daring, highly controlled and yet somehow haywire, the five short stories included in The Insufferable Gaucho are some of Roberto Bolaño's best. In addition, two essays are included: provocative and often scathing, they too are alive with Bolaño's trademark humour, violence and utter faith in the power of the written word. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'An exemplary literary rebel' New York Review of Books'A master of the short form' Independent'Bolaño wrote with the high-voltage first-person braininess of a Saul Bellow and an extreme subversive vision of his own' New York Times

The Insufferable Gaucho

Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was once the quiet, unknowable, unpromising member of Chile's young poetry scene. But the military coup of 1973 sees Alberto reborn as Chile's leading celebrity poet, Carlos Wieder. Known for his daring sky poems, penned in smoke high above the cities, Weider's dazzling trajectory is a cause for astonishment and speculation amongst his old poetry friends. Where did this talent suddenly spring from? And, how is it connected to the disappearance of the beautiful Garmendia twins?Told from across the years in exile in Europe, the narrator's attempts to trace the fate of his old circle will lead him to one last confrontation with the brutality of their generation. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS'Roberto Bolaño's universe - huge, interconnected, polyphonic - is formed from the collision of a wicked sense of humour and a vast and white-hot moral fire... His oeuvre is among the great, blistering literary achievements of the twentieth century' Lauren Groff'For stunning wit, brutal honesty, loving humanity and a heart that bleeds into the simplest of words, no other writer ever came close' Marlon James

Distant Star

As Pankaj Mishra remarked in The Nation, one of the remarkable qualities of Bolano's short stories is that they can do the "work of a novel." The Insufferable Gaucho contains tales bent on returning to haunt you. Unpredictable and daring, highly controlled yet somehow haywire, a Bolano story might concern an elusive plagiarist or an elderly lawyer giving up city life for an improbable return to the family estate, now gone to wrack and ruin. Bolano's stories have been applauded as "bleakly luminous and perfectly calibrated" (Publishers Weekly) and"complex and provocative" (International Herald Tribune), and as Francine Prose said in The New York Times Book Review, "something extraordinarily beautiful and (at least to me) entirely new." Two fascinating essays are also included.

L'esprit de la science fiction suivi de les déboires du vrai policier

Résumé

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