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I Give You My Silence: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 2026. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374616250. Translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West. 246 pages. hardcover.  Jacket design by Alex Merto. Jacket art: ‘The Musicians, 1979, by Fernando Botero. Translation of Le dedico mi silencio. 

DESCRIPTION - In his final novel, the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa returns to his native Peru. Toño Azpilcueta, writer of sundry articles, aspirant to the now defunct professorship of Peruvian studies, is an expert in the vals, a genre of music descended from the European waltz but rooted in New World Creole culture. When he hears a performance by the solitary and elusive guitarist Lalo Molfino, he is convinced not only that he is in the presence of the country’s finest musician, but that his own love for Peruvian music, as he has long suspected, has a profound social function. If he could just write the biography of the man before him and tell the story of both the vals and its attendant inspiring ethos, huachafería (Peru’s most important contribution to world culture, according to Toño), he might capture his country’s soul and inspire his fellow citizens remember the ties that bind them. Through music, the populace might unite and lay down their arms and embrace a harmonious and unified Peruvian culture. Both a send-up of parochial idealism and a love song to the culture of his homeland, Mario Vargas Llosa’s I Give You My Silence is the final novel of the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner, whose enduring works captured a changing Latin America. His tragic hero Toño, a man whose love for a democratic, proletarian music is at odds with the culture and politics of a modern Peru scarred by violence, is the writer’s last statement on the revelatory, maddening, and irrepressible belief in the transformative power of art.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 2021. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374601232. Translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West. 291 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Alex Merto. Premio Francisco Umbral al Libro del Año (2019). Translation of Tiempos recios. 

DESCRIPTION - The true story of Guatemala's political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it. Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changes the development of Latin America: the accusation by the Eisenhower administration that Árbenz encouraged the spread of Soviet Communism in the Americas. Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, the echoes of which are still felt today. In this thrilling novel, Mario Vargas Llosa fuses reality with two fictions: that of the narrator, who freely re-creates characters and situations, and the one designed by those who would control the politics and the economy of a continent by manipulating its history. Harsh Times is a gripping, revealing novel that directly confronts recent history. No one is better suited to tell this riveting story than Vargas Llosa, and there is no form better for it than his deeply textured fiction. Not since The Feast of the Goat, his classic novel of the downfall of Trujillo's regime in the Dominican Republic, has Vargas Llosa combined politics, characters, and suspense so unforgettably.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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Queen of the Sea: A History of Lisbon by Barry Hatton. New York. 2018. Hurst. 9781849049979.  328 pages. paperback. Cover: Lisbon: view of the city before the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1 November 1755 (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images).

DESCRIPTION - Lisbon was almost somewhere else. Portuguese officials considered moving the city after it was devastated by what is believed to be the strongest earthquake ever to strike modern Europe, in 1755, followed by a tidal wave as high as a double-decker bus and a six-day inferno that turned sand into glass. Lisbon's charm is legendary, but its rich, 2,000-year history is not widely known. This single-volume history provides an unrivalled and intimate portrait of the city and an entertaining account of its colorful past. It reveals that in Roman times the city was more important than initially thought, possessing a large theatre and hippodrome. The 1147 Siege of Lisbon was a dramatic medieval battle that was a key part of the Iberian reconquista. As Portugal built an empire spanning four continents, its capital became a wealthy international bazaar. The Portuguese king's cortège was led by a rhinoceros which was followed by five elephants in gold brocade, an Arabian horse and a jaguar. The Portuguese were the world's biggest slavers, and by the mid-16th century around 10 percent of the Lisbon's population was black, imbuing the city with an African flavor it has retained. Invasion by Napoleon's armies, and the assassination of a king and the establishment of a republic, also left their marks. The city's two bridges over the River Tagus illustrate the legacy of a 20th-century dictator and Portugal's new era in Europe. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Barry Hatton has been a British foreign correspondent in Lisbon for three decades. His previous book is The Portuguese: A Modern History.

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My Christina & Other Stories by Merce Rodoreda. Port Townsend. 1984. Graywolf Press. 0915308649. Translated and with an introduction by David H. Rosenthal. 128 pages. hardcover. Translated from: La meve Christina i altres contes; with 1 additional story from Semblava de seda i altres contes.

DESCRIPTION - My Christina and Other Stories Years after her death, Mercè Rodoreda's work is enjoying a well-deserved renaissance. The seventeen stories that comprise this volume vary tremendously in tone and style, from the hallucinatory to the bleakly realistic, from tales of tenderness and love to stories that might best be called folktales, reality merged with dream.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (October 10, 1908 - April 13, 1983) was a Catalan novelist in Catalan language. She is considered by many to be the most important Catalan novelist of the postwar period. Her novel La plaça del diamant ('The diamond square', translated as 'The Time of the Doves', 1962) has become the most acclaimed Catalan novel of all time and since the year it was published for the first time, it has been translated into over 30 languages. It is also considered by many to be one of the best novels published in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. She was born at 340 carrer de Balmes, Barcelona, in 1908. Her parents were Andreu Rodoreda, from Terrassa and Montserrat Gurguí, from Maresme. In 1928, just 20 years old, she married her uncle Joan Gurguí, 14 years her senior, and in 1929 she had her only child, Jordi. She began her writing career with short stories in magazines, as an escape from her unhappy marriage. She then wrote psychological novels, including Aloma which won the Crexells Prize, but even with the success this novel enjoyed, Rodoreda decided to remake and republish it some years later since she was not fully satisfied with this period of her life and her works at that time. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, she worked for the autonomous Government of Catalonia. She was exiled in France and later Switzerland, where in 1957 she broke her silence with the publication of her book Twenty-Two short stories, which earned her the Víctor Català Prize. With Camelia Street (El Carrer de les Camèlies) (1966) she won several prizes. In the 1970s, she returned to Romanyà de la Selva in Catalonia and finished the novel Mirall trencat (Broken Mirror) in 1974. Amongst other works came Viatges i flors (Travels and flowers) and Quanta, quanta guerra (How much War) in 1980, which was also the year in which she won the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. During the last period of her lifetime, her works developed from her usual psychologic style to become more akin to symbolism in its more cryptic form. In 1998 a literature prize was instituted in her name: the Mercè Rodoreda prize for short stories and narratives. She was made a Member of Honour of the Association of Writers in Catalan Language (Associacio d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana). The library in Platja d'Aro is named in her honor. She died in Girona of liver cancer, and was interred in the cemetery of Romanyà.

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The Time of the Doves by Merce Rodoreda. New York. 1980. Taplinger. 0800877314. Translated from the Catalan & With An Introduction by David H. Rosenthal. 201 pages. hardcover. Cover: Ivy Strick. Translation of La plaça del diamant. 

DESCRIPTION - The Time of the Doves, the powerfully written story of a naive shop-tender during the Spanish Civil War and beyond, is a rare and moving portrait of a simple soul confronting and surviving a convulsive period in history. The book has been widely translated, and was made into a film.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (October 10, 1908 - April 13, 1983) was a Catalan novelist in Catalan language. She is considered by many to be the most important Catalan novelist of the postwar period. Her novel La plaça del diamant ('The diamond square', translated as 'The Time of the Doves', 1962) has become the most acclaimed Catalan novel of all time and since the year it was published for the first time, it has been translated into over 30 languages. It is also considered by many to be one of the best novels published in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. She was born at 340 carrer de Balmes, Barcelona, in 1908. Her parents were Andreu Rodoreda, from Terrassa and Montserrat Gurguí, from Maresme. In 1928, just 20 years old, she married her uncle Joan Gurguí, 14 years her senior, and in 1929 she had her only child, Jordi. She began her writing career with short stories in magazines, as an escape from her unhappy marriage. She then wrote psychological novels, including Aloma which won the Crexells Prize, but even with the success this novel enjoyed, Rodoreda decided to remake and republish it some years later since she was not fully satisfied with this period of her life and her works at that time. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, she worked for the autonomous Government of Catalonia. She was exiled in France and later Switzerland, where in 1957 she broke her silence with the publication of her book Twenty-Two short stories, which earned her the Víctor Català Prize. With Camelia Street (El Carrer de les Camèlies) (1966) she won several prizes. In the 1970s, she returned to Romanyà de la Selva in Catalonia and finished the novel Mirall trencat (Broken Mirror) in 1974. Amongst other works came Viatges i flors (Travels and flowers) and Quanta, quanta guerra (How much War) in 1980, which was also the year in which she won the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. During the last period of her lifetime, her works developed from her usual psychologic style to become more akin to symbolism in its more cryptic form. In 1998 a literature prize was instituted in her name: the Mercè Rodoreda prize for short stories and narratives. She was made a Member of Honour of the Association of Writers in Catalan Language (Associacio d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana). The library in Platja d'Aro is named in her honor. She died in Girona of liver cancer, and was interred in the cemetery of Romanyà.

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Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine. Minneapolis. 2020. Graywolf Press. 9781644450215. 346 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: John Lucas. Jacket art: Nona Faustine.

DESCRIPTION - In Just Us, Claudia Rankine invites us into a necessary conversation about Whiteness in America. What would it take for us to breach the silence, guilt, and violence that arise from addressing Whiteness for what it is? What are the consequences if we keep avoiding this conversation? What might it look like if we step into it? “I learned early that being right pales next to staying in the room,” she writes. This brilliant assembly of essays, poems, documents, and images disrupts the false comfort of our culture's liminal and private spaces―the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth―where neutrality and politeness deflect true engagement in our shared problems. Rankine makes unprecedented art out of the actual voices and rebuttals of others: White men responding to, and with, their White male privilege; a friend clarifying her unexpected behavior at a play; and women on the street expressing the political currency of dyeing their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complement Rankine's own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word. Funny, vulnerable, and prescient, Just Us is Rankine's most intimate and urgent book, a crucial call to challenge our vexed reality.

Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican poet and playwright born in 1963 and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and New York City. She has taught at Case Western Reserve University, Barnard College, University of Georgia, and in the writing program at the University of Houston. As of 2011, Rankine is the Henry G. Lee Professor of Poetry at Pomona College.

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Bolaño: A Biography in Conversations by Monica Maristain. Brooklyn. 2014. Melville House. 9781612193472. Translated from the Spanish by Kit Maude. 274 pages. hardcover. Translation of El hijo de Míster Playa. Una semblanza de Roberto Bolaño.

DESCRIPTION - The first biography of Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño, the author of the international bestsellers The Savage Detectives and 2666. How to know the man behind works of fiction so prone to extravagance? In the first biography of Chilean novelist and poet Roberto Bolaño, journalist Mónica Maristain tracks Bolaño from his childhood in Chile to his youth in Mexico and his early infatuation with literature, to years of tremendous literary productivity in Spain, and to his untimely death and the posthumous and unprecedented stardom that came with the international publication of his novels The Savage Detectives and 2666. Bolaño: A Biography in Conversations is assembled from a series of rich interviews with the people who knew Bolaño best: we meet Bolaño's first publisher, who printed 225 copies of his first book of poetry; are introduced to his parents and an array of childhood friends, who watched a precocious young man turn into an obsessive writer who barely left the house; and witness the birth of Bolaño's famed Infrarealist literary movement. The book also sheds new light on aspects of Bolaño's life taht have long been shrouded in mystery: for the first time, we learn the details of his final illness and the drama of his final days. Throughout the book, Maristain present an image far removed from the stereotypes that have been created over the years, with the aim of reintroducing the man whose works grabbed readers worldwide. Maristain writes as a journalist and admirer, impressed with the power of Bolaño’s prose and the cool irony with which he faced the literary world.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - MÓNICA MARISTAIN is an editor, journalist, and poet. Born in Argentina, she has lived in Mexico since 2000. She has written for various national and international media, including the Argentine newspapers Clarín, Página/12, and La Nación, and in 1992 she was named Argentina's Journalist of the Year for her coverage of the Barcelona Olympics. She is currently the culture editor of SinEmbargo. Her much-cited interview with Roberto Bolaño, his last interview, was published by Melville House in Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. KIT MAUDE translated Jorge Luis Borges: The Last Interview and Other Conversations.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2021. Penguin Press. 9780735222885. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. 195 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: Na Kim. Jacket photograph: In the end the book will save itself, 2018 - Bas van Wieringen. Translation of Sepulcros de vaqueros.

DESCRIPTION - One more journey to the universe of Roberto Bolaño, an essential voice of contemporary Latin American literature. Cowboy Graves is an unexpected treasure from the vault of a revolutionary talent. Roberto Bolaño's boundless imagination and seemingly inexhaustible gift for shaping the chaos of his reality into fiction is unmistakable in these three novellas. In "Cowboy Graves," Arturo Belano--Bolaño's alter ego--returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism. "French Comedy of Horrors" takes the reader to French Guiana on the night after an eclipse where a seventeen-year-old answers a pay phone and finds himself recruited into the Clandestine Surrealist Group, a secret society of artists based in the sewers of Paris. And in "Fatherland," a young poet reckons with the fascist overthrow of his country, as the woman he is obsessed with disappears in the ensuing violence and a Third Reich fighter plane mysteriously writes her poetry in the sky overhead. These three fiercely original tales bear the signatures of Bolaño's extraordinary body of work, echoing the strange characters and uncanny scenes of his triumphs, while deepening our reverence for his gifts.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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The Unknown University by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2013. New Directions. 9780811219280. Translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy. 835 pages. hardcover. Translation of La universidad desconocida.

DESCRIPTION - Perhaps surprisingly to some of his fiction fans, Roberto Bolaño touted poetry as the superior art form, able to approach an infinity in which you become infinitely small without disappearing. When asked, “What makes you believe you’re a better poet than a novelist?” Bolaño replied, “The poetry makes me blush less.” The sum of his life s work in his preferred medium, The Unknown University is a showcase of Bolaño’s gift for freely crossing genres, with poems written in prose, stories in verse, and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized. Poetry, he believed, is braver than anyone.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Tres by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2011. New Directions. 9780811219273. Translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy. 174 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Rodrigo Corral. Translation of Tres.

DESCRIPTION - ‘Poetry is braver than anyone,' Roberto Bolaño believed, and the proof is here in Tres, his most inventive and bracing poetry collection. Roberto Bolaño0's Tres is a showcase of the author's willingness to freely cross genres, with poems in prose, stories in verse, and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized. As the title implies, the collection is composed of three sections. ‘Prose from Autumn in Gerona,' a cinematic series of prose poems, slowly reveals a subtle and emotional tale of unrequited love by presenting each scene, shattering it, and piecing it all back together, over and over again. The second part, ‘The Neochileans,' is a sort of On the Road in verse, which narrates the travels of a young Chilean band on tour in the far reaches of their country. Finally, the collection ends with a series of short poems that take us on ‘A Stroll Through Literature' and remind us of Bolaño's masterful ability to walk the line between the comically serious and the seriously comical.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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The Insufferable Gacho by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2010. New Directions. 9780811217163. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. 164 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Allen Frame. Jacket design by Semadar Megged. Translation of El gaucho insufrible.

DESCRIPTION - A trove of strange, arresting, short masterworks - five stories and two essays - by Roberto Bolaño, a writer who pulls bloodthirsty rabbits out of his hat. As Pankaj Mishra remarked in The Nation, one of the remarkable qualities of Bolaño's short stories is that they can do the ‘work of a novel.' THE INSUFFERABLE GAUCHO contains tales bent on returning to haunt you. Unpredictable and daring, highly controlled yet somehow haywire, a Bolaño story might concern an elusive plagiarist or an elderly lawyer giving up city life for an improbable return to the family estate, now gone to wrack and ruin. Bolaño's stories have been applauded as ‘bleakly luminous and perfectly calibrated' (Publishers Weekly) and ‘complex and provocative' (International Herald Tribune), and as Francine Prose said in The New York Times Book Review, ‘something extraordinarily beautiful and (at least to me) entirely new.' Two fascinating essays are also included.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Woes of the True Policeman by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2012. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374266745. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. 250 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Charlotte Strick. Jacket art based on an illustration of an Agave americana plant by Jacopo Ligozzi. Translation of Los sinsabores del verdadero policía.

DESCRIPTION - Begun in the 1980s and worked on until the author's death in 2003, Woes of the True Policeman is Roberto Bolaño's last, unfinished novel. The novel follows Oscar Amalfitano - an exiled Chilean university professor and widower - through the maze of his revolutionary past, his relationship with his teenage daughter, Rosa, his passion for a former student, and his retreat from scandal in Barcelona. Forced to leave Barcelona for Santa Teresa, a Mexican city close to the U.S. border where women are being killed in unprecedented numbers, Amalfitano soon begins an affair with Castillo, a young forger of Larry Rivers paintings. Meanwhile, Rosa, Amalfitano's daughter, engages in her own epistolary romance with a basketball player from Barcelona, while still trying to cope with her mother's early death and her father's secrets. After finding Castillo in bed with her father, Rosa is forced to confront her own crisis. What follows is an intimate police investigation of Amalfitano that involves a series of dark twists, culminating in a finale full of euphoria and heartbreak. Featuring characters and stories from his other books, Woes of the True Policeman invites the reader more than ever into the world of Roberto Bolaño. It is an exciting, kaleidoscopic novel, lyrical and intense, yet darkly humorous. Exploring the roots of memory and the limits of art, Woes of the True Policeman marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2011. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374275624. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. 277 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Rodrigo Corral and Charlotte Strick. Jacket photographs: Wall and light switch by Frederick Schmitt; beach by Massimo Vitali/Gallery Stock.

DESCRIPTION - On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war games champion Udo Berger returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals - the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado - and to the darker side of life in a resort town. Late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udo's well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval; while Ingeborg and Hanna return to their lives in Germany, he refuses to leave the hotel. Soon he and El Quemado are enmeshed in a round of Third Reich, Udo's favorite World War II strategy game, and Udo discovers that the game's consequences may be all too real. Written in 1989 and found among Roberto Bolaño's papers after his death, THE THIRD REICH is a stunning exploration of memory and violence. Reading this quick, visceral novel, we see a world-class writer coming into his own - and exploring for the first time the themes that would define his masterpieces THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES and 2666.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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The Secret of Evil by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2012. New Directions. 9780811218153. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews and Natasha Wimmer. 144 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Rodrigo Corral. Translation of El Secreto del Mal.

DESCRIPTION - THE SECRET OF EVIL opens the computer file of all the texts Bolaño was working on at his death: a glimpse of what was coming from ‘one of those rare writers who write for a future time - we have only begun to appreciate his strange, oblique genius.' - John Banville. A North American journalist in Paris is woken at 4 a.m. by a mysterious caller urgently needing to pass on information. For V. S. Naipaul the prevalence of sodomy in Argentina is a symptom of the nation's political ills. The members of the Tel Quel group abscond from a photo to pursue intellectual and erotic adventures. Daniela de Montecristo (familiar to readers of NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS and 2666) recounts the loss of her virginity. Arturo Belano returns to Mexico City and meets the last disciples of Ulises Lima, who play in a band called The Asshole of Morelos. Belano's son Geronimo disappears in Berlin during the Days of Chaos in 2005. Memories of a return to the native land. Argentine writers as gangsters. Zombie pandemonium as allegory. The various pieces in THE SECRET OF EVIL extend the intricate, single web that is the work of Roberto Bolaño. CONTENTS: Preliminary note -- Colonia Lindavista -- The secret of evil -- The old man of the mountain -- The colonel's son -- Scholars of sodom -- The room next door -- Labyrinth -- Vagaries of the literature of doom -- Crimes -- I can't read -- Beach -- Muscles -- The tour -- Daniela -- Suntan -- Death of Ulises -- The trouble-maker -- Sevilla kills me -- The days of chaos.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview & Other Conversations by Roberto Bolaño. Brooklyn. 2009. Melville House Publishers. 9781933633831. Translated from the Spanish by Sybil Perez. Introduction by Marcela Valdes. 126 pages. paperback. Cover photo by Basso Cannarsa.

DESCRIPTION - With the release of Roberto Bolaño's THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES in 1998, journalist Monica Maristain discovered a writer ‘capable of befriending his readers.' After exchanging several letters with Bolaño, Maristain formed a friendship of her own, culminating in an extensive interview with the novelist about truth and consequences, an interview that turned out to be Bolaño's last. Appearing for the first time in English, Bolaño's final interview is accompanied by a collection of conversations with reporters stationed throughout Latin America, providing a rich context for the work of the writer who, according to essayist Marcela Valdes, is ‘a T.S. Eliot or Virginia Woolf of Latin American letters.' As in all of Bolaño's work, there is also wide-ranging discussion of the author's many literary influences. (Explanatory notes on authors and titles that may be unfamiliar to English-language readers are included here.) The interviews, all of which were completed during the writing of the gigantic 2666, also address Bolaño's deepest personal concerns, from his domestic life and two young children to the realities of a fatal disease.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2010. New Directions. 9780811217149. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. 134 pages. hardcover. Jacket art - detail of a photograph by Allen Frame, Jacket design Semadar Megged. Translation of Monsieur Pain.

DESCRIPTION - Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo is in the hospital, unable to stop hiccupping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the mesmerist Monsieur Pain. A timid bachelor, Pain is in love with the widow Reynaud, and agrees to try to use his powers to help save the poet's life. But then two mysterious Spanish agents intervene, determined to keep him from treating the patient. Terrible anxiety enters the story - along with another practitioner of the occult sciences, tarot cards, nightmares, Mme Curie, WWII, hopeless love, and an assassination. Poor Monsieur Pain, haunted and guilty, wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris. . . One of Roberto Bolano's most moving and tender novels, Monsieur Pain creates a galaxy of historical figures (Cesar Vallejo and his wife Georgette, the mesmerist Pierre Pain, and Mme Curie and her daughter Irene all actually existed) only to explode it gleefully in a final ‘Epilogue for Voices,' scattering the docudrama and opening the book onto vast, untold hinterlands.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2006. New Directions. 0811216349. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. 219 pages. hardcover. Jacket art - detail of 'Mariachis, Mexico City, 2000' by Allen Frame.

DESCRIPTION - ‘The melancholy folklore of exile,' as Roberto Bolaño once put it, pervades these fourteen haunting stories. Bolaño'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.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2004. New Directions. 0811215865. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. Paperback Original. 149 pages. paperback. NDP993. Cover design by Semadar Megged. Translation of Estrella distante.

DESCRIPTION - The star of Roberto Bolaño's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multi-media enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this ‘star' in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime. The narrator, unable to stop himself, tries to track Ruiz-Tagle down, and sees signs of his activity over and over again. A corrosive, mocking humor sparkles within Bolaño's darkest visions of Chile under Pinochet. In Bolaño's world there's a big graveyard and there's a big graveyard laugh. (He once described his novel BY NIGHT IN CHILE as ‘a tale of terror, a situation comedy, and a combination pastoral-gothic novel.') Many Chilean authors have written about the ‘bloody events of the early Pinochet years, the abductions and murders,' Richard Eder commented in The New York Times: ‘None has done it in so dark and glittering a fashion as Roberto Bolaño.'

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Anti-Education: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions by Friedrich Nietzsche. New York. 2016. New York Review Books. 9781590178942. Edited and with an introduction and notes by Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon. Translated from the German by Damion Searls. An NYRB Classics Original. 124 pages. paperback. Translation of Über die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten.. 

DESCRIPTION - In 1869, at the age of twenty-four, the precociously brilliant Friedrich Nietzsche was appointed to a professorship of classical philology at the University of Basel. He seemed marked for a successful and conventional academic career. Then the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner transformed his ambitions. The genius of such thinkers and makers—the kind of genius that had emerged in ancient Greece—this alone was the touchstone for true understanding. But how was education to serve genius, especially in a modern society marked more and more by an unholy alliance between academic specialization, mass-market journalism, and the militarized state? Something more than sturdy scholarship was called for. A new way of teaching and questioning, a new philosophy. What that new way might be was the question Nietzsche broached in five vivid, popular public lectures in Basel in 1872. Anti-Education presents a provocative and timely reckoning with what remains one of the central challenges of the modern world. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer. He wrote several critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism. Nietzsche's key ideas include perspectivism, the Will to Power, the 'death of God', the Übermensch and eternal recurrence. One of the key tenets of his philosophy is the concept of 'life-affirmation,' which embraces the realities of the world in which we live over the idea of a world beyond. It further champions the creative powers of the individual to strive beyond social, cultural, and moral contexts. Nietzsche's attitude towards religion and morality was marked with atheism, psychologism and historism; he considered them to be human creations loaded with the error of confusing cause and effect. His radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth has been the focus of extensive commentary, and his influence remains substantial, particularly in the continental philosophical schools of existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism. His ideas of individual overcoming and transcendence beyond structure and context have had a profound impact on late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century thinkers, who have used these concepts as points of departure in the development of their philosophies. Most recently, Nietzsche's reflections have been received in various philosophical approaches that move beyond humanism, e.g., transhumanism. Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist—a scholar of Greek and Roman textual criticism—before turning to philosophy. In 1869, at age twenty-four, he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, the youngest individual to have held this position. He resigned in the summer of 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life. In 1889, at age forty-four, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties. The breakdown was later ascribed to atypical general paresis due to tertiary syphilis, but this diagnosis has come into question. Re-examination of Nietzsche's medical evaluation papers show that he almost certainly died of brain cancer. Nietzsche lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, after which he fell under the care of his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche until his death in 1900. As his caretaker, his sister assumed the roles of curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts. Förster-Nietzsche was married to a prominent German nationalist and antisemite, Bernhard Förster, and reworked Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her own ideology, often in ways contrary to Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were strongly and explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism (see Nietzsche's criticism of antisemitism and nationalism). Through Förster-Nietzsche's editions, Nietzsche's name became associated with German militarism and Nazism, although later twentieth-century scholars have counteracted this conception of his ideas.

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R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life by Karel Capek. Cambridge. 2023. MIT Press. 9780262544504. Translated from the Czech by Stephan S. Simek. Edited by Jitka Cejkova. 292 pages. paperback. Translations of R.U.R. and Ze života hmyzu. 

DESCRIPTION - A new translation of Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.—which famously coined the term “robot”—and a collection of essays reflecting on the play’s legacy from scientists and scholars who work in artificial life and robotics. Karel Čapek's “R.U.R.” and the Vision of Artificial Life offers a new, highly faithful translation by Štěpán Šimek of Czech novelist, playwright, and critic Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots, as well as twenty essays from contemporary writers on the 1920 play. R.U.R. is perhaps best known for first coining the term “robot” (in Czech, robota means serfdom or arduous drudgery). The twenty essays in this new English edition, beautifully edited by Jitka Čejková, are selected from Robot 100, an edited collection in Czech with perspectives from 100 contemporary voices that was published in 2020 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the play. Čapek’s robots were autonomous beings, but biological, not mechanical, made of chemically synthesized soft matter resembling living tissue, like the synthetic humans in Blade Runner, Westworld, or Ex Machina. The contributors to the collection—scientists and other scholars—explore the legacy of the play and its connections to the current state of research in artificial life, or ALife. Throughout the book, it is impossible to ignore Čapek’s prescience, as his century-old science fiction play raises contemporary questions with respect to robotics, synthetic biology, technology, artificial life, and artificial intelligence, anticipating many of the formidable challenges we face today. Contributors: Jitka Čejková, Miguel Aguilera, Iñigo R. Arandia, Josh Bongard, Julyan Cartwright, Seth Bullock, Dominique Chen, Gusz Eiben, Tom Froese, Carlos Gershenson, Inman Harvey, Jana Horáková, Takashi Ikegami, Sina Khajehabdollahi, George Musser, Geoff Nitschke, Julie Nováková, Antoine Pasquali, Hemma Philamore, Lana Sinapayen, Hiroki Sayama, Nathaniel Virgo, Olaf Witkowski.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karel Capek was a Czech journalist and playwright, as was his brother Josef who also had a considerable reputation as a painter of the Cubist School. Karel also wrote a sequel to R.U.R. with Josef, called Adam the Creator (1927), which showed man endeavouring to rebuild the world destroyed by robots. Karel's other publications include The Brigand (1920) The Makropulos Affair (1923) - which argued the case for longevity and decided against it; The White Scourge (1937) and The Mother (1938) - two anti-Fascist plays dealing with the rise of dictatorship and the devastating effects of war; and How A Play is Produced (an amusing short monograph).

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Sangrando por los 5 sentidos / Bleeding From All 5 Senses by Mario Papasquiaro Santiago. Buffalo. 2019. White Pine Press. 9781945680311. Translated from the Spanish by Cole Heinowitz. Winner of the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation. 166 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Most readers have never heard of José Alfredo Zendejas Pineda (1953-1998). A few might know him by his pseudonym, Mario Santiago Papasquiaro. But many readers know (and even love) the quasi-mythical character he inspired, Ulises Lima, from Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives: “a ticking time bomb” who wrote incessantly “in the margins of books that he stole and on pieces of scrap paper that he was always losing,” but who “never wrote poems.” The real Santiago did, in fact, fill every page he could find with his words. And he may indeed have been “a ticking time bomb.” But―for the record―he did write poems. “The raucous energy and desperate inventiveness of Bleeding From All 5 Senses takes on a second life in Heinowitz’s sinuous translations of Papasquiaro. Melding persistent social and emotional urgency, Bleeding from All 5 Senses affectively embodies something vital of our tumultuous world. In a compendium of tones ranging from the slyly humorous to the jarringly serious, Heinowitz renders Papasquiaro’s poems with meticulous care and creativity. Heinowitz conveys the intensity and music of Papasquiaro’s voice in English in such a way that the poet’s language takes on new valences of meaning in both United States and international anglophone contexts. Heinowitz’s translation of Papasquiaro’s roving tonal shifts, idiosyncratic syntax, and mosaic of sociocultural concerns makes a new and useful contribution to contemporary anglophone poetry.” ― Cliff Becker Prize Judges Daniel Borzutzky, Aaron Coleman, and Mani Rao. “Mario Santiago Papasquiaro ignited a blaze that continues to burn. In his manuscripts, asterisks fall like sparks announcing flames. Each of his texts is the scene of intense daring: the poet enters the ring to deal his own shadow a knockout blow. Rarely has literature been put to the test with such courage. Mario despises feints; he does not try to bedazzle but he does play with fire. Convinced that true victory is in the flesh, he shows us the scars with which he writes the body.”―Juan Villoro. "I think the illuminating side of his work as a poet is still revealing itself. One merit of his poetry (and one that people may not be aware of) was that which distinguished him from the writers he admired―for example, his ability to portray a particular dimension of the coarseness of urban life (more prominent now than ever) that still hadn’t been expressed in Mexican poetry, despite the achievements of Efraín Huerta, the innovations of Salvador Novo and Renato Leduc, and the creative maneuverings of the Stridentists. Mario Santiago took his role as Mexico City’s flâneur very seriously, and a significant portion of his poetic visions are derived from real experiences. He managed to validate his own field of vision and to offer forth, from that vantage point, the sum of his impressions."―Claudia Kerik.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mario Santiago Papasquiaro is the pen name of José Alfredo Zendejas Pineda (Mexico City, December 25, 1953–1998), Mexican poet and co-founder of the infrarrealista poetry movement. Papasquiaro was born in 1953 in Mexico City. Papasquiaro's first reading was at the Museo Nacional de San Carlos in 1973. In 1976, he founded the Infrarrealismo (Infrarealism) movement along with Roberto Bolaño, Cuauhtémoc Méndez Estrada, Ramón Méndez Estrada, Bruno Montané, Rubén Medina, Juan Esteban Harrington, Óscar Altamirano, José Peguero, Guadalupe Ochoa, José Vicente Anaya, Pedro Damián Bautista, and Mara Larrosa. Santiago inspired the character of Ulises Lima in fellow infrarealist Roberto Bolaño's novel The Savage Detectives. Like Santiago, the Lima character is an eccentric adventurer, and an opponent of the traditional forms of writers who sold out for state scholarships. Santiago frequently made enemies due to his sincerity and open criticism of what he deemed inferior forms of poetry, the literary elite, and poets themselves. He has gained slight recognition, though he is recognized and lauded by the recorded oral testimonies of his "comrades-in-arms". He died after being hit by a motorist on January 10, 1998, in Mexico City. His poems were collected in Aullido de cisne, published in 1996. The last poem he wrote was EME ESE PE, published in La Jornada newspaper days before his death. Santiago is considered by many to be the principal exponent and purest stylistic representative of the infrarealism movement, a vanguard literary movement representing a rupture with the Mexican literary establishment. His poems are complex, erudite, and highly metaphorical. Santiago sought an aesthetic of signs, much like the calligrams of Guillaume Apollinaire. The majority of his work is still unpublished.

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Poetry Come Out of My Mouth: Selected Poems of Mario Papasquiaro Santiago by Mario Papasquiaro Santiago. New Orleans. 2018. Dialogos Books. 9781944884406. Translated from the Spanish by Arturo Mantecon. Artwork by Maceo Montoya. Introduction by Ilan Stavans. 231 pages. paperback. Cover art by Maceo Montoya.

DESCRIPTION - This first major selection in English of the poems of the great infrarealist poet Mario Santiago Papasquiaro collects work from Aullido de cisne (1996), Jeta de santo (2008) and Arte & basura (2012). Masterfully translated by Arturo Mantecón, with original artwork by Maceo Montoya, hopefully Poetry Comes out of My Mouth will bring recognition to one of the most important Mexican poets of the twentieth century. The poetry of legendary Mexican poet Mario Santiago Papasquiaro is little known in the USA. Closest friend of Roberto Bolaño (he is Ulises Lima in his Los Detectives Salvajes), Mario Santiago’s poetry flies in the most hallucinatory manner out of the tangled mass of Mexico’s heritage. Fusing the supernal and infernal energies of César Vallejo and Allen Ginsberg, this non-stop automatic-rifle poetry has few peers in contemporary poetry anywhere, and the meticulous translations of Arturo Mantecón superbly render this often difficult stylist into an English equally explosive and eloquent. With this potpourri of past and present, imagined and unimaginable visions, Santiago puts himself over the edge, racing as it were to his own destruction.—Ivan Argüelles, author of The Invention of Spain and Madonna Septet. Mario Santiago writes not only with brilliance, but pays homage to his many influences—from the Beat poets to Artaud—whom he turns into his family in a theater of cultural references and, as a communist, makes them all part of his fundamental, historical rage for justice, love and transformation in an epoch steeped in drugs, lunacy and spontaneous righteousness. Arturo Mantecón’s majestic translations reveal Santiago’s mastery of lyricism and poetic drama. If you find yourself reading yourself when you read this book, don’t say I didn’t tell you so—that’s how great Santiago is.—Jack Hirschmanm, author of All That’s Left and Front Lines. Every line of these poems pack little explosions of beauty, thought, rage, joy, that coalesce into a radiant blaze. I found myself bouncing in my chair as I read, carried by the language’s irresistible exuberance, and Arturo Mantecón’s on-fire translations. These poems make fresh a youthful spirit and language from a lost time. Mario Santiago still drives solemn pompous Mexican critics crazy; some are deeply annoyed that his friend and champion Roberto Bolaño’s fame have brought these poems new attention. I love the poems that take on some of Mexico’s sacred foundational myths, and far from merely subverting them, unexpectedly humanize these majestic figures and bring them so close, in poems that drum their honest, brilliantly jiving yet humble beat inside of you: “the children of my children will transmit my vision in their own way.”—Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name and The Art of Political Murder.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mario Santiago Papasquiaro is the pen name of José Alfredo Zendejas Pineda (Mexico City, December 25, 1953–1998), Mexican poet and co-founder of the infrarrealista poetry movement. Papasquiaro was born in 1953 in Mexico City. Papasquiaro's first reading was at the Museo Nacional de San Carlos in 1973. In 1976, he founded the Infrarrealismo (Infrarealism) movement along with Roberto Bolaño, Cuauhtémoc Méndez Estrada, Ramón Méndez Estrada, Bruno Montané, Rubén Medina, Juan Esteban Harrington, Óscar Altamirano, José Peguero, Guadalupe Ochoa, José Vicente Anaya, Pedro Damián Bautista, and Mara Larrosa. Santiago inspired the character of Ulises Lima in fellow infrarealist Roberto Bolaño's novel The Savage Detectives. Like Santiago, the Lima character is an eccentric adventurer, and an opponent of the traditional forms of writers who sold out for state scholarships. Santiago frequently made enemies due to his sincerity and open criticism of what he deemed inferior forms of poetry, the literary elite, and poets themselves. He has gained slight recognition, though he is recognized and lauded by the recorded oral testimonies of his "comrades-in-arms". He died after being hit by a motorist on January 10, 1998, in Mexico City. His poems were collected in Aullido de cisne, published in 1996. The last poem he wrote was EME ESE PE, published in La Jornada newspaper days before his death. Santiago is considered by many to be the principal exponent and purest stylistic representative of the infrarealism movement, a vanguard literary movement representing a rupture with the Mexican literary establishment. His poems are complex, erudite, and highly metaphorical. Santiago sought an aesthetic of signs, much like the calligrams of Guillaume Apollinaire. The majority of his work is still unpublished.

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Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick. New York. 1964. Ballantine Books. Paperback Original. 220 pages. paperback. U2191.

DESCRIPTION - On the arid colony of Mars the only thing more precious than water may be a ten-year-old schizophrenic boy named Manfred Steiner. For although the UN has slated ‘anomalous' children for deportation and destruction, other people - especially Supreme Goodmember Arnie Kott of the Water Worker's union - suspect that Manfred's disorder may be a window into the future. In MARTIAN TIME-SLIP Philip K. Dick uses power politics and extraterrestrial real estate scams, adultery, and murder to penetrate the mysteries of being and time.

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,’ Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.’ In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

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Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick. New York. 1960. Ace Books. Paperback Original. Part Of An Ace Double With THE SKYNAPPERS by John Brunner. 117 pages. paperback. D-457. 

DESCRIPTION - Vulcan's Hammer is a 1960 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was released originally as an Ace Double. This has been considered to be the final outing of Dick's 1950s style pulp science-fiction writing, before his better-received work such as the Hugo Award-winning Man in the High Castle, published a year later. In 2029 CE, the Earth is run by the Unity organization after a devastating world war. Unity runs the planet, controlling humans from childhood education onwards through the Vulcan series of artificial intelligences, but is fought by the Healer movement. Unity Director William Barris discovers that the Vulcan 3 computer has become sentient and is considering drastic action to combat what it sees as a threat to itself. Vulcan 3 has been kept ignorant about information related to the Healer revolutionary movement by Managing Director Jason Dills, who is still loyal to its (also sentient) predecessor, Vulcan 2. Vulcan 2 fears that it will soon be superseded by Vulcan 3, and previously established the Healers as a movement to overthrow its successor.

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,’ Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.’ In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

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Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick. New York. 1965. Belmont Books. 175 pages. paperback. 92-618. Cover art by Beekman.

DESCRIPTION - RAGLE GUMM was his name. He lived at his brother-in-law's house and people thought the way he earned his living was peculiar. You see he had a mathematical genius which he used to solve complicated puzzles appearing in each day's newspaper. Then, almost imperceptibly, one day his equations took over and started changing the natural order of things, until he, and everybody around him, was caught in a spinning, incredible vortex of fear, hate, greed and lust in a world where time was out of joint.

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,’ Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.’ In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

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