Last Evenings on Earth
Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolaño is a reprint edition published by New Directions Publishing in 2007, featuring 219 pages in English. This collection comprises fourteen stories that explore the themes of exile and the struggles of writers grappling with their personal quests. Bolaño’s narrators often recount their experiences in a first-person narrative style, reflecting on their unresolved efforts and the haunting nature of their lives.
Readers will find a rich tapestry of characters living in the margins, frequently confronting their fears and the violence that permeates their existence. The stories are set against the backdrop of the Chilean exile diaspora in Latin America and Europe, showcasing Bolaño’s unique perspective on a “failed generation.” The narratives delve into the complexities of identity and the haunting folklore of exile, making this collection a poignant exploration of the human condition.
Official synopsis Publisher
“The melancholy folklore of exile,” as Roberto Bolaño once put it, pervades these fourteen haunting stories. Bolano’s narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and generally unlucky) quests, who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and to narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living in the margins, often coming to pieces, and sometimes, as in a nightmare, in constant flight from something horrid.
In the short story “Silva the Eye,” Bolaño writes in the opening sentence: “It’s strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as The Eye, always tried to escape violence, even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can’t be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around 20 years old when Salvador Allende died.”
Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolaño’s beloved “failed generation,” the stories of Last Evenings on Earth have appeared in The New Yorker and Grand Street.
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