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By Night in Chile | 
| Author: Roberto Bolano
Creator: Chris Andrews
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.89
You Save: $6.06 (43%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 32654
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 0811215474
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780811215473
ASIN: 0811215474
Publication Date: December 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081006210455T
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Product Description
A deathbed confession revolving around Opus Dei and Pinochet, By Night in Chile pours out the self-justifying dark memories of the Jesuit priest Father Urrutia. As through a crack in the wall, By Night in Chile's single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of Church and State in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel—Roberto Bolano's first work available in English—recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet, but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and a conservative literary critic, a sort of lap dog to the rich and powerful cultural elite, in whose villas he encounters Pablo Neruda and Ernst Juenger. Father Urrutia is offered a tour of Europe by agents of Opus Dei (to study "the disintegration of the churches," a journey into realms of the surreal); and ensnared by this plum, he is next assigned—after the destruction of Allende—the secret, never-to-be-disclosed job of teaching Pinochet, at night, all about Marxism, so the junta generals can know their enemy. Soon, searingly, his memories go from bad to worse. Heart-stopping and hypnotic, By Night in Chile marks the American debut of an astonishing writer.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 small poems within larger stories May 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
What I have come to appreciate reading Bolano's book is the fact that he takes you on several small journeys getting you from plot-point to plot-point. You almost don't realize that he is doing it until you finish one of these tangents and get led carefully back to the main storyline. That Bolano trusts his talents enough to introduce characters that are only there to make a single point, that they exist in the novel just to die or to cease to exist just so some small nuance of Chile, the Church or his personal imagination can be revealed is truly something. For instance, a "Guatemalan Painter" is introduced and given depth and perspective before being assigned his lonely fate which is to fade away to nothingness despite having great talent just so that the author can depict the grim experiences of displaced foreigners and to introduce Don Salvador Reyes to Ernst Juenger. He introduces Salvador Reyes and rounds him out as a character, portrays him as a man of principles and position, an erudite pillar of society. The meeting of the three men only accomplishes one single thing, a book translated in French is passed from Reyes to Juenger providing the context for the only mention in the history of World War II of a Chilean ever taking part in the greatest conflict known to man. As if to say, one of us took part in this great endeavor, and although nothing of the man exists or of the painter who made possible the acquaintance with the German officer and writer, Ernst Juenger who documents the existence of our participant, but one of us was there and here is the proof and displaced and erased we may be in this gigantic, Western history, at least ONE of us was there. One Chilean. One man. One proof. And without further explanation, the whole tale falls under the title "Landscape: Mexico City an hour before dawn". It is a poem, not a story.
Bolano does this to you again and again with such a light touch in these side-stories hidden among what is actually happening. And if you focus too closely on what is more obviously happening to Urrutia Lacroix as he becomes party to Mr. Fear and Mr. Hate, to the falconers and their destruction of spirit, to the Marxists he teaches and disowns, to the suppressed homosexuality of Farewell and the more literary circles, to the duality of his roles as liberal writer and conservative critic, and the old man denouncing and finally ceasing to renounce his wizened youth only at the end, etc...if you look at only these more blatant metaphors you will miss the really fine morsels hidden in the tedious little filler pages, poetry masquerading as fluff, revelation in the side-notes.
 First time Bolano reader left disappointed. January 6, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I had heard so many positive things about Roberto Bolano that I decided to give this short read a go as my first entry into his work. Unfortunately, this work never captivated me with its meandering writing. I felt the first half of the book was too slow and took too long to get into the story. The story never really found its rhythm until Fr. Urrutia returned from his trip to Europe and was enlisted to help Pinochet and his cadre of leaders better understand Marxism. Given all the favorable feedback Bolano receives, I'll give him another try even though this work left me extremely disappointed.
 Everyone loves this book and raves about it. December 13, 2007
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
Everyone raves about this book, but it's awful. The prose is stilted, unimaginative, cliche-ridden, and self-indulgent. It could have been 1/3 as long (and it's short) and would have been twice as good.
Quick Read. June 1, 2007
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Bolano writes with very long sentences and therfore I found that there was a rythm that I needed to acquire in reading this book. Bolano ties in historical facts of Chile which makes it interesting. It is a small book, therefore a quick read. I did not find this book to be one that I couldn't put down. I would give it a 7 out of 10.
Interesting story by a stellar writer January 4, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Bolano presents the odd story of this self-deluded literary critic and rightist in an unnamed country likely to be Chile, of course, in an engaging first-person point-of-view. Fortunately, Bolano keeps a tight grip on the character POV, and allows us to see the world from the skewed vision of this character, without revealing any unreliability. Still, the book, although a short one, bogs down a bit, particularly in comparison to Distant Star or the short stories in Last Evenings on Earth. An enjoyable read, though not his absolute best.
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