The latest addition to my website is Alejandro Zambra‘s Bonsái (Bonsai). This is a clever, witty, post modern novel about sex/romance with literary undertones. Our main character is Julio who starts an affair with Emilia. We learned from the first sentence that she is already dead though Julio himself does not learn about her death … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Roberto Bolaño‘s and A G Porta‘s Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce [Advice from a Disciple of Morrison and a Fan of Joyce]. This novel was written before both writers were famous and tells the story of a Catalan writer, Ángel Ros, who … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Carlos Droguett‘s Eloy [Eloy]. Ñato Eloy was a real-life Chilean bandit, killed by the police in 1941. This novel recounts the last twenty-four hours of his life, as seen from his perspective. He is hiding out in a shack, where an old man and young woman live. Both … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alberto Fuguet‘s Tinta roja [Red Ink]. Our hero is Alfonso Fernández Ferrer, who is fifty-one when writing this book but looks back at an experience in his early twenties. He had been studying journalism at university and he is sent for a four month internship at a Santiago … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alberto Fuguet‘s Mala onda (Bad Vibes). This novel had considerable influence in Chile, dealing as it does, with a rebel without a cause, seventeen-year old Matías Vicuña, who comes from a well-to-do Pinochet-supporting family and is disenchanted with his life, his family, his school and even, to some … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Diamela Eltit‘s Vaca sagrada (Sacred Cow). This is a feminist, post-modern novel by a Chilean writer who stayed in Chile during the Pinochet regime. She tells the story of a woman who has two messy, violent relationships, with violence on both sides, showing indirectly, in the relationships, the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Enrique Lihn‘s El arte de la palabra [The Way of Speaking]. Lihn was primarily a poet but he wrote five novels of which this is the best known. It concerns a literary conference on the fictional island of Miranda, which has been described as a cross between Chile … Read more