The Skating Rink

A phenomenally unusual three-way murder mystery.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Roberto Bolaño is a short-form writer at heart -- he began as a poet, after all, and even his 1,000-page doorstopper-masterpiece, 2666, which was published in English to great acclaim last year, is composed of five short novels. Since the Bolaño craze kicked into high gear in America with the 2007 publication of The Savage Detectives, there's been lots of talk about the late Chilean author's two big novels, but not enough has been said about his shorter books, each about 200 pages, which New Directions has been issuing steadily for years. They pursue the same themes of exile and art as The Savage Detectives and 2666 but view them through a narrower lens. The Skating Rink is another of these more compact fictions to be fluidly translated by Chris Andrews, and it is the most action-packed, a cross between a classic murder mystery and a trademark Bolaño tale of lost souls searching for meaning and a place to call home.

Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed “by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time” (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),” and as “the real thing and the rarest” (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.

Chris Andrews has won the TLS Valle Inclán Prize and the PEN Translation Prize for his New Directions translations of Roberto Bolaño.