Here is the eagerly anticipated second volume of stories by Roberto Bolaño. Tender or etched in acid; hazily suggestive or chillingly definitive: a trove of strangely arresting, short master works.
As Pankaj Mishra remarked in The Nation, one of the remarkable qualities of Bolaño's short stories is that they can do the "work of a novel." The Return contains thirteen unforgettable stories bent on returning to haunt you. Wide-ranging, suggestive, and daring, a Bolaño story might concern the unexpected fate of a beautiful ex-girlfriend or a dream of meeting Enrique Lihn: his plots go anywhere and everywhere and they always surprise. Consider the title piece: a young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor; just as his soul is departing his body, it realizes strange doings are afoot––and what follows next defies the imagination (except Bolaño's own).
“Although the thirteen stories that make up Roberto Bolaño's newly translated collection percolate with brooding darkness, they also bubble with a surprising luminosity ... each richer and more resonant than the last.”
“The sense of embattlement that animates the writing, and the scab-picking intensity that he brings to his obsessions, makes The Return a compelling encapsulation of Bolaño's work.”
“Genius: This new collection of thirteen stories proves to be a defining sampler of Bolaño's style, thematic concerns and favored character types.”
— Booklist
“Dark, intimate, and sneakily touching: there is gold to be found in this collection.”
— Michael Greenberg, The New York Review of Books
“Bolaño has joined the immortals.”
— Washington Post
Cloth $23.95
CN 0.00
224 pages
ISBN 9780811217156
Paperback $ 14.95
CN 16.00
208 pages
ISBN 9780811219051
trim size: 5x8
Ebook $23.95
ISBN 9780811220576
