New Directions Pearls Antwerp, Book 0, (Paperback)

from TheTwoDs

Originally written in 1980 when Bolano was 27 years old, not published in Spanish until 2002 and translated into English in 2011, Antwerp is the genesis of his fictional voice. The fractured narration, self-as-character, conversational snippets - it's all here in a much more raw form than his lat...

from Eoin

The most difficult and least rewarding Bolaño I've read yet. Still, he sure know how to put a sentence together and frame a moment in time.

from donato

First, some fun facts: 1) This was the first novel written by Bolaño, but the last to be published during his lifetime (he didn't try to get it published when he wrote it because "they would have slammed the door in my face"). 2) This particular (Italian) translation was done by a Masters class i...

from Voise15

Bolano's first 'novel', Antwerp is an intriguing and condensed rehersal of motifs that he goes on to develop with great verve in his later works - dreams and reality, the foreigner, the struggling poet...Antwerp however feels much more experimental and hallucinatory and is less accessible than so...