Woes of the True Policeman
  • Published: 3 December 2024
  • ISBN: 9781784879563
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99

Woes of the True Policeman

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A major, retrospective launch of Roberto Bolaño’s work – now published as a Vintage Classics author for the first time.

When Oscar Amalfitano begins an affair with one of his students, he has no idea where it will lead.

More than his turbulent revolutionary past, or the death of his beautiful wife, the scandalous exposure of this relationship will change him for ever. Forced to flee Barcelona with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amalfitano finds himself in Santa Teresa, a sprawling, mythical town on the Mexico-US border, populated by mysterious characters and haunted by dark tales of murdered women.

Returning to the the world and characters of 2666, Bolaño's masterpiece, Woes of the True Policeman explores the the power of art, memory and desire - and marks a kaleidoscopic, lyrical and darkly humorous last act in one of the great oeuvres of world literature.

TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER

‘Hallucinatory, manic, fearful, comic... Bolaño must be read by anyone who loves the novel’ Herald

‘We savour all he has written as every offering is a portal into the elaborate terrain of his genius’ Patti Smith
  • Published: 3 December 2024
  • ISBN: 9781784879563
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolano was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953, and died in 2003 in Spain. He is widely regarded as one of the foremost Latin American novelists of his generation and his work has won him numerous literary prizes.

Also by Roberto Bolaño

The Savage Detectives
The Insufferable Gaucho
The Skating Rink
The Third Reich
The Return
The Collected Short Stories of Roberto Bolaño
A Little Lumpen Novelita
See all

Praise for Woes of the True Policeman

It’s no exaggeration to call Bolaño a genius

Washington Post

Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world

Guardian

Bolaño's voice demands attention.

The New Yorker

The most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation.

The New York Times Book Review

An event of language and devilish wit

Wall Street Journal

There is a power in these pages that very few writers ever achieve

Scotsman

Roberto Bolaño mastered the alchemy of turning the trivial into the sublime, the everyday into adventure. Bolaño is among the best at this diabolical skill.

Georgi Gospodinov

When I read Bolaño, I think: everything is possible again

Nicole Krauss
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