Roberto Bolaño

National Bestseller In this dazzling novel, the book that established his international reputation, Roberto Bolaño tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes--the last survivors of an underground literary movement, perhaps of literature itself--on a tragicomic quest through a darkening, entropic universe: our own. The Savage Detectives is an exuberant, raunchy, wildly inventive, and ambitious novel from one of the greatest Latin American authors of our age.

A Novel

The Savage Detectives

Roberto Bolańo

The savage detectives

Clare B

I loved this book. Bolaño does this amazing trick - there are sections of this book that could effectively stand alone as stories and yet they work together to create a fuller picture of the characters. I was really impressed throughout.

Hellboy TCR

An Astonishing masterpiece! 

Full review (Malayalam) :- https://melethilwrites.wordpress.com/...

Anthony Sabourin

Traversing life's journey from comedy to tragedy by way of omission. Kinda haunting & will stick to your ribs, but I like the short stories better.

Donald

I read TSD for the first time in 2009. It was my first Bolaño, and immediately upon finishing it I headed to the bookstore to buy everything else. When I finished reading all of his fiction the other week, I decided the best thing to do was go back to where I began with him.

My first thought: this novel is better and more ambitious than 2666. There are a lot of connections between the two novels, both direct and indirect (Archimboldi, the Sonoran desert, Santa Theresa, Nazism, etc).

I'm sure there is a lot in this book I missed. Bolaño is very concerned with the fate of his literary generation (mostly in Latin America but not exclusively). My ignorance about his generation, especially the poets, leaves me outside of this concern. What's so amazing about this novel is that one can come in blind, appreciate only the outline of its (polemical) history and argument about a generation of poets without getting most of the references and details, and still love it. I can only imagine what it'd be like to read if I were part of or knowledgable about the world it describes/mourns/attacks/celebrates.

Bolaño, we don't deserve you.

Melody Izard

This writing. I'm going to say it. It's visceral. It's so beautiful it hurts. And here's what I mean. I want to rush forward to read the next thing but at the same time I want to savor the sentence, the thought, the image, the slight flicker of delight. I once had an aunt who drove her car with her right foot on the gas and her left on the brake. I feel like that's what I'm doing when I read Bolaño.

Joshua Line

I really wanted to give this book four stars, but I simply cannot. I found myself wanting to pick this book up every time I would finish a chapter or so. For pure space and weight considerations, I should not have brought this book with me on a trip to Pittsburgh. Instead, I packed it away, and finished it, with relish.

Kjell-Morten Bratsberg Thorsen

Lorenzo Caputo

Udit Desai

Robert Miller

With an afterword by Natasha Wimmer. Winner of the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize. Natasha Wimmer’s translation of The Savage Detectives was chosen as one of the ten best books of 2007 by the Washington Post and the New York Times. New Year’s Eve 1975, Mexico City. Two hunted men leave town in a hurry, on the desert-bound trail of a vanished poet. Spanning two decades and crossing continents, theirs is a remarkable quest through a darkening universe – our own. It is a journey told and shared by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, whose testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of the twentieth century.

Boxuan Mao

Abhinav Bhat

Laurin C Guthrie

Steve Langton

Hobbes

lucinda ventimiglia

Nav Singh

Alejandra 

Eitan Hershkovitz

An exhilarating, must-read novel from one of Latin America's pre-eminent writers, and author of the acclaimed masterpiece 2666.

Jovan Lekovic

Peter Read

First published in Spanish in 1998, The Savage Detectives was immediately hailed as a critical success, wining the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize. But with the 2007 English-language translation the book became more than a bestseller - it began the global sensation of Bolañomania. New Year's Eve 1975, Mexico City. Two hunted men leave town in a hurry, on the desert-bound trail of a vanished poet. Spanning two decades and crossing continents, this remarkable quest is a journey told and shared by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, whose testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of the twentieth century. In 2012 Picador celebrated its 40th anniversary. During that time we have published many prize-winning and bestselling authors including Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy, Alice Sebold and Helen Fielding, Graham Swift and Alan Hollinghurst. Years later, Picador continue to bring readers the very best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry from across the globe. Discover more at picador.com/40

The Savage Detectives A Novel

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