Last Evenings on Earth
About this audiobook
“Extraordinarily beautiful . . . [Like] a dream from which we awake inspired to look more attentively at the world.”
—Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review
A journey to Acapulco gradually becomes a descent into the underworld. An elderly South American writer instructs a protégé in the subterfuges of entering work for provincial literary prizes. A litany unfolds, offering sixty-nine reasons why not to dance with Pablo Neruda. “The melancholy folklore of exile,” as Roberto Bolaño once put it, pervades the fourteen haunting stories of Last Evenings on Earth. Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolaño’s beloved “failed generation,” this collection was the first to introduce the English-speaking world to Bolaño’s immeasurable gifts as a short-story writer.
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About the author
Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) was the author of The Savage Detectives and 2666, among many other notable works. Born in Santiago, Chile, he later lived in Mexico City, Paris, and Barcelona. His accolades include the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He died at the age of fifty and is widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation.
Chris Andrews has translated books of prose fiction by César Aira, Roberto Bolaño, Liliana Colanzi, and Ágota Kristóf, among others. He is also the author of How to Do Things with Forms and The Oblong Plot.
