Roberto Bolaño

In Roberto Bolaño's The Third Reich war-games champion Udo Berger and his girlfriend Ingeborg are on holiday. There they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, and a band of shady locals. They have fun, see the sights, relax. Then, late one night, Charly disappears without a trace. Desperate to solve the mystery, Udo refuses to leave, even after Ingeborg returns home. Increasingly frightened, the situation slips beyond his grasp and he suddenly realizes that the consequences of this ‘game’ are much more serious than he ever imagined.

The Third Reich

Roberto Bolan+ёo

Returning with his girlfriend to the small Costa Brava town of his childhood summers, German war-game champion Udo Berger is introduced to a band of locals and the darker side of resort town life before his world is upended by the disappearance of a fellow vacationer, a situation that compels Udo to lose himself in his favorite strategy game. By the award-winning late author of The Savage Detectives.

A Novel

Patrick Book

For me, Bolano might be most notable for coming up with amazing premises for novels and managing to make the actual text so bland and agonizing to slog through they take on their own brand of remarkableness. It's unfortunate!

Lacy W

Find this review and others like it at https://aravenclawlibraryx.wordpress.com

tw: abuse, rape jokes, cheating, use of word faggot, sexual assault, homophobic comments

Why do adult books have to be written with such awful characters? Why do they have to have barely any plot or the plot that they do have is confusing. I confess I haven’t read a lot of books in the adult fiction world, maybe a handful or so, but I’m starting to think I’m not going to enjoy the genre. Either that or I’m going to have to be a bit more selective of what I do pick. A prime example of why is this book right here. What an awful waste of time. I wasted so much time reading this book. 

The main character, Udo, is just awful. I wrote, in my notes, that he was something else but I’m going to try and be a little nice. A little bit anyway. He’s pretentious and thinks he’s better than everybody because he’s this world renowned game player. I still haven’t figured out what kind of game he plays because the author didn’t explain it properly. I assume it’s like Dungeons and Dragons with World of Warcraft mixed in? All I truly know is that it has something to do with World War II. Maybe it’s like Stratego? 

I could go on and on about Udo but I won’t. Suffice to say, the dude sucks. I want to talk about the plot or lack thereof. There was no plot. In the synopsis, it mentions how Udo is trying to find his missing friend and discovers some secrets along the way. The plot gets solved in 100 pages, leaving the rest of the book to just flounder. I basically read about Udo cheating on his girlfriend, complaining about his girlfriend, playing a game with a man who was facially disfigured and obsessed over this man. I have no idea why I continued to read this book when I could have just stopped.

Overall, this wasn’t good in case my scathing review didn’t clear that up. There was no plot. The mystery was solved in the first 100 pages. The MC was horrible and treated everyone around him like garbage. One of the critical elements of the book wasn’t explained properly. It was just a serious waste of time. Good thing I only paid one US dollar for this book.

Donald

I've now read all the Bolaño novels that've been translated into English, and 'The Third Reich' stands out as the most dissimilar from the rest.

Shortly after becoming the German war-games champion, Udo Berger and his girlfriend, Ingeborg, holiday on the Costa Brava. There they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, and a band of shady locals who introduce them to the darker side of life in the town. Then, late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udoâe(tm)s well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval . . . Frightened, Udo refuses to leave, even after Ingeborg returns home, and his increasingly feverish dreams push him into delirium. As everything slips beyond his grasp, he attempts to re-assert himself by engaging the enigmatic and severely disfigured El Quemado âe" a foreigner who lives in a Spartan burrow on the beach âe" in a days-long match of his favourite war game, Third Reich. But, too late to stop the madness, he realizes that the consequences of this game are much more serious than he ever imagined. Combining the exhilaration of The Savage Detectives with the darkness of his later work, The Third Reich âe" BolaÃ±oâe(tm)s first new novel since the epic 2666 âe" is a visceral book exploring memory, madness and violence. It is both the perfect way to discover the dazzling genius of Roberto BolaÃ±o and an unmissable addition to the oeuvre for those who already have.

The Third Reich

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