2010/18

Roberto Bolaño: Antwerp (78p. in the first American edition)

2666 and The Savage Detectives are the two key works in Bolaño’s oeuvre, which for the rest exists of a series of smaller novels/novellas gyrating around the aforementioned centerpieces, perhaps the most well-known being By Night in Chile.

Me being Belgian, Bolaño the cult writer, Antwerp the cult city, and I thought I’d give it a go. Antwerp turns out to be a highly experimental novella (more poetic than prosaic) of lesser interest, in which Antwerp is only mentioned on the side. The American edition at review here is the first English translation of the original (in Spanish) Amberes, and just came out the other day, April 2010. There is no Dutch translation yet.