Nazi literature in the Americas

One of the Chilean author's most ingenious and disturbing works. Published in 1996, the book presents itself as a kind of fictional encyclopedia: a collection of invented biographies of writers from the Americas, all linked, more or less directly, to fascism.

Bolaño constructs a meticulous catalogue of names, titles, dates, and imaginary literary movements, recreating with irony and documentary precision a parallel history of literature. Behind the humour and parody, the book offers a somber reflection on the relationship between art and ideology. Talent, aesthetics, or the pursuit of originality can coexist (and indeed do coexist) with violence and fanaticism. 

A profound critique of the cult of genius and the totalitarian temptation, both political and artistic. Nazi Literature in the Americas anticipates themes that Bolaño would later develop in The Savage Detectives and 2666: the boundary between the real and the invented, failure as the artist's condition, and evil as a persistent presence in culture.

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003), a wandering Chilean, lived what he wrote. Exiled, marginal, obsessive, he died young and left behind a monumental body of work. Between Mexico, Catalonia, and the endless night of Latin American poetry, he constructed a mythology of his own, in which surviving failure is the only possible victory.