Skating Rink

Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed “by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time” (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),” and as “the real thing and the rarest” (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50. The poet and translator Chris Andrews has won the Valle Inclan Prize and the French-American Translation Prize for his work.

"This is pure Bolano." "There is much intensity at work, although The Skating Rink leavens the melancholy of exile with an interest in the uncanny and a knack for the surrealist image." -- Siddhartha Deb "Books of the Year" "Exquisite ... another unlikely masterpiece, as sui generis as all his books so far. The Skating Rink manages to honor genre conventions while simultaneously exploding them, creating a work of intense and unrealized longing." -- Wyatt Mason