A Little Lumpen Novelita, Roberto Bolano
A Little Lumpen Novelita, Roberto Bolano
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A Little Lumpen Novelita

Author: Roberto Bolaño, Natasha Wimmer

Narrator: Gabra Zackman

Unabridged: 1 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/13/2018

Synopsis

“Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime.” So Bianca begins her tale of growing up the hard way in Rome in A Little Lumpen Novelita.Orphaned overnight as a teenager—“our parents died in a car crash on their first vacation without us”—she drops out of school and gets a crappy job. At night, she is plagued by a terrible brightness, and soon she drifts into bad company. Her little brother brings home two petty criminals who need a place to stay. As the four of them share the family apartment and plot a strange crime, Bianca learns she can fall even lower.Electric and tense with foreboding, with its jagged, propulsive short chapters beautifully translated by Natasha Wimmer, A Little Lumpen Novelita—one of the last novels Roberto Bolaño published—delivers a surprising, fractured fairy tale of taking control of one’s fate.

About Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, France, and Spain. He has been acclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as “by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time” and as “the real thing and the rarest” by Susan Sontag. Among his many prizes are the prestigious Premio Herralde de Novela and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. Bolaño is widely considered the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry before his death at the age of fifty.

About Natasha Wimmer

Natasha Wimmer’s translation of Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives was chosen as one of the ten best books of 2007 by the Washington Post and New York Times. Her translation of his 2666 won the National Book Award’s Best Novel of the Year as well as the PEN Prize.

About Gabra Zackman

Gabra Zackman is an actress, author, and narrator who has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. She was educated at Northwestern University. A classically trained actress, she has appeared in theaters all over the country as well as on film and television.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on November 12, 2023

This book is very short, a novella or maybe just a long short story – less than 100 pages. So I’ll be careful about giving away too much. The GR blurb tells us what the book is about, including the opening lines which I was going to quote, so I’ll use that: "Now I am a mother and a married woman, but......more

Goodreads review by Jibran on November 29, 2016

The real only stands for a different kind of unreality, a less random, more fleshed out unreality. An Italian girl, Bianca, and her unnamed brother, two recently orphaned teenagers left alone in the world, struggle through the disaster of their parents' deaths in a car accident to make a new path for......more

Quotes

“As for Bolaño, what can one say? One of our greatest writers, a straight colossus.” Junot Díaz, New York Times bestselling author

“One of the best books of the year…As substantial as a book three times as long…This is a glittering gem, as maddening and haunting as you’d expect from Bolaño.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Among Bolaño’s most intoxicating works. Obsessive and ambiguous, its open-ended nature is reflective not only of the protagonist but of the author himself.” NPR

“The very highest level of literary achievement.” Colm Tóibín, author of The Testament of Mary

“A Little Lumpen Novelita may be Bolaño’s best trick, and greatest gift, ever.” Gawker

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