Description: Praise for The Spirit of Science Fiction : "With words alone, Bolao summons a visual world, creating in this book, as in his others, what Mario Vargas Llosa has called ''images and fantasies for posterity''... admirers will find in these themes and players a satisfying proleptic glimpse of his picaresque masterpiece, 1998''s The Savage Detectives ... [This] gem-choked puzzle of a book... serves as a key to Bolano''s later work, unlocking clues to his abiding obsessions ... [and] is a hardy forerunner that stands on its own." -- The New York Times Book Review "[Bolao] is a kinetic, epiphanic writer, and even his earliest works tremble like a whirring, unpredictable machine. . . The Spirit of Science Fiction functions as a kind of key to the jeweled box of Bolao''s fictions, an index of the images that would come to obsess him. . . . longtime Bolao fans will doubtless enjoy this familiar cocktail of sorrow and ecstasy." -- Paris Review " The Spirit of Science Fiction is structured unconventionally, enticing the reader to solve its mysteries. Bolao adroitly braids three related narratives . . . an entertaining, lyrical and accomplished novel." -- Wall Street Journal " This is vintage Bolao: a lusty and rapturous shaggy-dog tale of Latin American exiles and bohemian youth." -- Vanityfair.com "An unusual pleasure to read. You can almost feel Bolao shaking out his limbs. . . It''s a joy to watch such a brilliant stylist practice his moves, and to see such a brilliant mind expand on the page." -- NPR.org " An impressionistic and prescient treasure. " - Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture, Top Reads for February "A minor gem. . . Bolao''s lusty, laughing passion for art and literature, for women and Mexico City, is tangible here." - Washington Post "An intriguing and dreamy portrait of two writers taking different paths in their pursuit of their love of literature, hoping to discover their voices." -- Publishers Weekly "The confidence, the brio, and indeed the voice we''ve come to know from the more mature Bolao is on abundant display. The dedicated reader of Bolao will recognize themes and characters that will undergo further development in the years to come. . . The volume will serve admirably as an introduction to this deservedly-fted author. To detail elements of the plot, to describe any of the scenes in the novel, would be fruitless; this is the kind of book you give yourself up to, as you would tequila, LSD, hashish, a performance of Tosca, or a large bowl of spaghetti Bolognese. . . There is something indefinable about what makes Bolao''s work so attractive, and one can only think of it as his audacity: he never settles for the mundane; he always takes risks, and his love of language is apparent on every page." -- The Nervous Breakdown Praise for Roberto Bolao: "Roberto Bolao was an exemplary literary rebel. To drag fiction toward the unknown he had to go there himself, and then invent a method with which to represent it." --Sarah Kerr, The New York Review of Books "Not since Gabriel Garca Mrquez . . . has a Latin American redrawn the map of world literature so emphatically as Roberto Bolao does . . . It''s no exaggeration to call him a genius." Ilan Stavans, The Washington Post Book World "When I read Bolao I think: Everything is possible again. To step inside his books is to accustom yourself, as much as is possible, to walking along the edge of an abyss." Nicole Krauss "The most influential and admired novelist of his generation." Susan Sontag "One of the most respected and influential writers of [his] generation . . . At once funny and vaguely, pervasively, frightening." --John Banville, The Nation

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