Nazi Literature in the Americas

Roberto Bolaño

Nazi Literature in the Americas, a wicked invented encyclopedia of imaginary fascist writers and literary tastemakers, is Bolaño playing with sharp, twisting knives. As if he were Borges’s wisecracking, sardonic son, Bolaño has meticulously created a tightly woven network of far-right litterateurs and purveyors of belles lettres for whom Hitler was beauty, truth, and the great lost hope.

Stacey D'Erasmo, New York Times Book Review

A tour de force of black humor, Nazi Literature in the Americas, one of Roberto Bolaño’s most popular books, is now available as a paperback.

Included in the GLOOM & DOOM bundle Get the bundle

Nazi Literature in the Americas

Fiction by Roberto Bolaño

Translated from Spanish by Chris Andrews

Nazi Literature in the Americas was the first of Roberto Bolaño’s books to reach a wide public. When it was published by Seix Barral in 1996, critics in Spain were quick to recognize the arrival of an important new talent. The book presents itself as a biographical dictionary of American writers who flirted with or espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is a tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition. Nazi Literature in the Americas is composed of short biographies, including descriptions of the writers’ works, plus an epilogue (“for Monsters”), which includes even briefer biographies of persons mentioned in passing. All of the writers are imaginary, although they are all carefully and credibly situated in real literary worlds. Ernesto Pérez Masón, for example, in the sample included here, is an imaginary member of the real Orígenes group in Cuba, and his farcical clashes with José Lezama Lima recall stories about the spats between Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera, as recounted in Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s Mea Cuba. The origins of the imaginary writers are diverse. Authors from twelve different countries are included. The countries with the most representatives are Argentina (8) and the USA (7).

Buy Nazi Literature in the Americas

Paperback(published May, 01 2009)

ISBN
9780811217941
Price US
15.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
240

Clothbound(published May, 01 2009)

ISBN
9780811217057
Price US
23.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
240

Ebook(published May, 01 2009)

ISBN
9780811220569
Price US
13.95
Page Count
240
Portrait of Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño

Twentieth-century Chilean poet and novelist

Nazi Literature in the Americas, a wicked invented encyclopedia of imaginary fascist writers and literary tastemakers, is Bolaño playing with sharp, twisting knives. As if he were Borges’s wisecracking, sardonic son, Bolaño has meticulously created a tightly woven network of far-right litterateurs and purveyors of belles lettres for whom Hitler was beauty, truth, and the great lost hope.

Stacey D'Erasmo, New York Times Book Review