Books

Book # 11
Title: By Night in Chile (Nocturno de Chile)
Author: Roberto Bolano
Translated from Spanish by Chris Andrews
Genre: fiction/novella
Copyright/Published: 2000/2003
ISBN: 1-84343-035-5
Pages: 144

Rating: 4/5
Date Started- Completed: January 22, 2005- February 3, 2006

I learned about Bolano on a Polish book site. He has just been translated into Polish and was hailed there as one of the best contemporary South-American writers. I was wondering why I had never heard of him, and it turns out that he started publishing not so long before his death in 2003. He always thought of himself as a poet, and started writing novels late in his life. He died relatively young of a liver disorder at the age of 50. More of his books are being translated into English, and some are already available.
The book:
It's Chile sometime in 1990s. These are the last hours of a dying priest, Father Ibacache. He is lying on his deathbed which he steers through the river of his memory using his hands as oars. All the fused stream of consciousness scenes he goes through while changing landscapes are the flashbacks from his memory. On our journey through his visions, we are taken on a personal journey through his life and through the recent history of Chile. The title then may have a double meaning given the recent Chilean history of political violence.

There is an odd beauty in the imagery, an interesting story of priests, falcons, and pigeons, and we meet characters like Pinochet, Neruda and Allende.
Recommended if you like Jose Saramago, as Bolano’s style is very reminiscent of his.

Quotes:

"I can hear what sounds like a gang of primates chattering away, all at once, in a state of high excitement, and then I take one hand out of the under the blankets and put in the water and laboriously steer the bed around, using my hand as an oar, moving my four fingers together like a punkah, and when the bed has turned around, all I can see is the jungle and the river and its tributaries and the sky, no longer grey but luminous blue, and two very small, very distant clouds scudding like children swept along by the wind. The chattering of the monkeys has died away. What a relief. What peace. A Peace that summons the memory of other blue skies, other diminutive clouds scudding eastward before the wind, and how they filled my spirit with boredom."

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Bolano