Antwerp

Written when he was only twenty-seven, Antwerp can be viewed as the Big Bang of Roberto Bolano s fictional universe. This novel presents the genesis of Bolano s enterprise in prose; all the elements are here, highly compressed, at the moment when his talent explodes. From this springboard which Bolano chose to publish in 2002, twenty years after he d written it ( and even that I can t be certain of ) as if testing out a high dive, he would plunge into the unexplored depths of the modern novel.

Voices speak from a dream, from a nightmare, from passersby, from an omniscient narrator, from Roberto Bolano. Antwerp s fractured narration in fifty-four sections moves in multiple directions and cuts to the bone.