The Return

The Return

• Used Book in Good Condition

<p><strong>Here is the eagerly anticipated second volume of stories by Roberto Bolano. Tender or etched in acid; hazily suggestive or chillingly definitive: a trove of strangely arresting, short master works.</strong></p> As Pankaj Mishra remarked in <em>The Nation</em>, one of the remarkable qualities of Bolano’s short stories is that they can do the “work of a novel.” <em>The Return</em> contains thirteen unforgettable stories bent on returning to haunt you. Wide-ranging, suggestive, and daring, a Bolano story might concern the unexpected fate of a beautiful ex-girlfriend or a dream of meeting Enrique Lihn: his plots go anywhere and everywhere and they always surprise. Consider the title piece: a young party animal collapses in a Parisian disco and dies on the dance floor; just as his soul is departing his body, it realizes strange doings are afoot―and what follows next defies the imagination (except Bolano’s own).<br /><br /> Although a few have been serialized in <em>The New Yorker</em> and <em>Playboy</em>, most of the stories of <em>The Return</em> have never before appeared in English, and to Bolano’s many readers will be like catnip to the cats.