Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño (Santiago, 1953 – Barcelona, 2003) was a Chilean writer of novels and poetry who wrote in Spanish from Mexico and, above all, from Catalonia. His work, shaped by exile and by a sharp view of power and the literary world, has become one of the central references in Spanish-language fiction of the last few decades.

Although he was born in Santiago, Bolaño never lived there. His childhood unfolded on the Chilean coast around Valparaíso, in Quilpué and in Los Ángeles, where at ten he started selling bus tickets. In 1968 his family moved to Mexico City, and at sixteen the teenager left school to devote himself to reading and writing every day. He was a voracious reader, a regular at the public library, and he earned his living through a range of jobs.

In 1973 he went back to Chile briefly, drawn by Salvador Allende's reform project. Shortly after the military coup he was arrested and held for several days, an episode he would later revisit in his stories. Back in Mexico, in 1975 he became one of the founders of infrarrealismo, a poetic movement that challenged the country's literary establishment. His friendships with Mario Santiago Papasquiaro and Bruno Montané later provided material for The Savage Detectives.

In 1977 he settled in Spain, first on the Costa Brava and then in Blanes, in the province of Girona. While working at precarious jobs he kept writing poetry, and in his early forties he turned to fiction, partly out of a sense of financial responsibility toward his family. His liver condition worsened over the years; while he was writing 2666 he was waiting for a transplant, and he died in Barcelona in 2003.

His writing blends poetry and prose, ignores the boundaries between genres, and returns repeatedly to political violence, exile and the figure of the marginal writer. Among his novels, The Savage Detectives won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 1999, and the posthumous 2666 is his most ambitious. Since his death his reputation has grown considerably: his books have been translated into many languages and have appeared on lists of the best recent works, including The New York Times' 2024 list.