Nazi Literature in the Americas, Roberto Bolano
Nazi Literature in the Americas, Roberto Bolano
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Nazi Literature in the Americas

Author: Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews

Narrator: Jonathan Davis

Unabridged: 6 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/13/2017

Synopsis

A tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition, Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as a biographical dictionary of writers who espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Comprising short biographies about imaginary writers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Columbia, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the United States, Nazi Literature in the Americas includes descriptions of the writers’ works, cross-references, a bibliography, and also an “Epilogue for Monsters.” All the writers are carefully and credibly situated in real literary worlds. There are fourteen thematic sections with titles such as “Forerunners and Figures of the Anti-Enlightenment,” “Magicians, Mercenaries, and Miserable Individuals,” and “North American Poets.”Brisk and pseudoacademic, Nazi Literature in the Americas delicately balances irony and pathos. Bolaño does not simply use his writers for target practice: in the space of a few pages he manages to sketch character portraits that are often pathetically funny, sometimes surprisingly moving, and, on occasion, authentically chilling. A remarkably inventive, funny, and disquieting sui generis novel, Nazi Literature in the Americas offers a clear view into the workings of one of the most extraordinarily fecund literary imaginations of our time.

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 Chris Andrews

Chris Andrews teaches at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, where he is a member of the Writing and Society Research Center. He has translated books by Roberto Bolaño and César Aira.

About Jonathan Davis

Jonathan Davis has received widespread critical acclaim for his narration in a variety of genres. He has won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration in 2009, 2011, and 2012, as well as being a finalist for an Audie in 2007, 2013, and three times in 2014. He has also garnered accolades from Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and AudioFile magazine.

Reviews

Goodreads review by s.penkevich

‘A novel about order and disorder, justice and injustice, God and the Void.’ In the final narrative of Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas—a literary joke that is executed with such deadpan precision it becomes a transcendent work of brilliance—we read the life story of Ramírez Hoffman,......more

Goodreads review by Fabian

The artists, writers, poets which inhabit this lexicon-type novel breathe the air of history, and all lead individual destinies never devoid of woe. The pursuit of art is presented warts-&-all, & is as realistic of art as it is about the appreciation of art. "Nazi Literature in the Americas" is one p......more

Quotes

“A wicked, invented encyclopedia of imaginary fascist writers and literary tastemakers, is Bolaño playing with sharp, twisting knives. As if he were Borges’s wisecracking, sardonic son, Bolaño has meticulously created a tightly woven network of far-right litterateurs and purveyors of belles lettres for whom Hitler was beauty, truth and great lost hope. Cross-referenced, complete with bibliography and a biographical list of secondary figures, Nazi Literature is composed of a series of sketches, the compressed life stories of writers in North and South America who never existed, but all too easily could have. Goose-stepping caricatures a la ‘The Producers’ they are not; instead, they are frighteningly subtle, poignant and plausible.” New York Times

“Imaginative, full of a love for literature, and, unlikely as it may seem, exceptionally entertaining…Playing a tricky game, carefully balancing mockery and black humor against our natural sense of revulsion…Roberto Bolaño is worth discovering, worth reading—and even worth all the trouble of having to explain why it is that you are toting around a book called Nazi Literature in the Americas." Washington Post

“Award-winning translator Chris Andrews gives us…proof that Bolaño is…one of the most important literary figures of twenty-five years.” Nectar Magazine

“This book, brilliantly and rambunctiously written, is a denunciation of homegrown fascism.” Forward

“Masterfully executed…Wildly funny…[A] wickedly entertaining and evocative masterwork.” Jewish Exponent

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