books @ cc.

by Roberto Bolaño (2000)

A first-person narration novella, By Night in Chile is a deathbed confession of Father Urrutia, a.k.a. Father Ibacache, a half-hearted Jesuit priest and literary critic. Set during the transition from Allende to Pinochet, the novella — written in one single paragraph except for the last sentence — paints the turbulent political landscape with particular emphasis on the state, the church, and the literary/artistic figures.

by Roberto Bolaño

Selected from Editorial Anagrama’s collections, the short stories in Last Evenings on Earth were previously published in English in The New Yorker, Grand Street, and Tin House. Written in direct, short sentences, one feels, as Bolaño said (or so according to the book jacket), “the melancholy folklore of exile” pervading these stories.