Toying with terror | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

REVIEW

Loners in Roberto Bolano's stories drift from anxiety and obsession into something darker. Like poetry, bibliophilia, murder, madness. The downward spiral is gradual and unstoppable, its path littered with symbols, graveyards and black humour. Very black. And very humorous. You emerge from one of his books _ and so many of them have been released in English in the seven years since his death, aged 50, in 2003 _ soaked in a cold sweat, like one of those amateur detectives in his novels who stray too close to the abyss and limbo.

THE THIRD REICH By Roberto Bolano. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. Published in Great Britain, 2011, by Picador; 277 pages. At Kinokuniya Books, 462 baht.

On the back cover of The Third Reich _ the manuscript of which was found after Bolano's death in a heap of discarded papers _ the publisher quotes a review from the Sunday Times: "Readers who have snacked on a writer such as Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolano." That's a hip bait, dropping the name of someone who's probably the hippest author of his generation who doesn't write in English. While Murakami has fashioned blockbusters out of loneliness and alienation, as is obvious in his international hit IQ84, what moves Bolano is the dark matter of history, art and despair.