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The Savage Detectives

The Savage Detectives

Author(s): Roberto Bolaño

Location(s): Mexico City

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1970s onwards

Location

Content

Los Detectivos Salvajes is an urban odyssey set in the sprawl of 1975 Mexico City. Written by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, the novel won the Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize and is counted among his most successful novels, along with the posthumously published 2666. The novel follows a 17-year-old poet as he navigates the vastness of Mexico City and becomes embroiled in the activities of a literary movement and its adherents. The pull and sway of the city carries young Juan García Madero along as he tries to find his way in this strange urban world of literature, politics, and love. Bolaño’s prose veers and wheels in fragmentation with the poetic forty plus voices who narrate the bulk of the book. GQ ‘It’s no exaggeration to call Bolaño a genius. The Savage Detectives alone should grant him immortality’ Washington Post ‘Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him: he adjusts your angle of view on the world’ Guardian

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Lead Review

“”The Savage Detectives” is deeply satisfying. . . . Bolano’s book throws down a great, clunking, formal gauntlet to his readers’ conventional expectations. . . . A very good novel.”–Thomas McGonigle, “Los Angeles”” Times”

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